"At the end of the day, you can't cut your way to a margin," Michael Mutterer, RN, told Becker's during a recent phone call.
Mr. Mutterer is the interim president and CEO of Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox, Ill., a Southwestern suburb of Chicago. It's one of the few remaining independent hospitals in the area, surrounded by a number of "big players": Advocate Health Care, Endeavor Health, Northwestern Medicine, Loyola Medicine, UChicago Medicine.
To survive in a market like that, Silver Cross has to do more than just cut costs. It has to create additional revenue sources and find innovative ways to stand out, according to Mr. Mutterer.
Access is currently the hospital's No. 1 priority as it looks to build and grow within its primary and secondary service markets. It's looking to attract patients who may not originally have thought of Silver Cross for care, or may be inclined to travel into the city and visit an academic medical center.
Visibility influenced the design of Silver Cross' new medical building, currently under construction in Orland Park, Ill. The facility — a partnership with Premier Suburban Medical Group — will be a "very prominent" physical presence in the hospital's secondary service market, where it doesn't hold the top market share, Mr. Mutterer said.
The building will be made primarily of glass, and will have two floors to differentiate from its single-story counterparts on LaGrange Road. The city of Orland Park wanted the building to fit in more with the surrounding landscape, but Silver Cross fought back, Mr. Mutterer said: "We kept pushing, like, 'No, no, we're not going to give up on this.'"
Mr. Mutterer hopes that the building will pique community members' interest in Silver Cross, allowing the independent hospital to remain competitive.
"Putting that flagship building there for us is setting our feet in stone in that Eastern market for Silver Cross," he said. "You drive down LaGrange Road and you've got Northwestern, Loyola, all of these major systems that have planted roots on that corridor. I'm going to tell you, when you drive down LaGrange, you will notice Silver Cross' building."
"Purposefully, we made a statement with that building."