Building a Healthcare Roadmap for a Rural Community
CHALLENGE
Nestled in the picturesque beauty of West Virginia’s Appalachian mountains, the organization is the only hospital serving a five-county region. A 25-bed critical access hospital needed to craft a long-term plan to meet the rapidly evolving healthcare needs of a rural population with some of the highest rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and cancer in the nation. At the same time, the organization needed to consider how to ensure it’s long-term sustainability against the challenges of market consolidation bringing well-funded competitors closer, flat population growth, a local economy in stagnation and a region with spotty access to broadband internet and mobile phone service.
30+ stakeholder interviews
Patient consumer segmentation
Provider consumer focus groups
Demand forecasting
Operational analysis
Facility condition + engineering analysis
Competitor analysis
Horizon scanning
Site-of-service planning
Customized demand forecasting
Key room and space need determination
Facilitated strategic co-creation sessions
APPROACH
The challenges facing this client and the surrounding region were considerably different than what is commonly seen urban and suburban communities. To respond, there was a deep focus on understanding the community, healthcare utilization patterns in the region and how patients, providers and other stakeholders in the region view the world around them. In addition to employing the usual quantitative and qualitative strategic planning methodologies, ethnographic and analogous research were employed to understand the nuances of access, affordability, convenience and trust in the region.
RESULTS
A project unlike any other, the strategic plan developed for the organization was a multi-pronged approach focused on seizing immediate opportunities in the market, solving long-standing access barriers in the community and reimaging the overall operational model of small hospital operating in a community where staffing shortages and recruiting challenges were the norm. Outputs of the strategic plan included:
Recommendations for programmatic expansion
Campus modernization plan prioritizing hyperflexibility of environments and staff
Regional site-of-service recommendations based on community need, mitigation of access barriers and establishing competitive firewalls around the service area
Considerations for potential partnerships structured to invest in and grow healthcare srvices in the region
90
min travel times in the region for cancer care
$500K
projected annual labor cost reduction from one renovation project