LOS ANGELES, CA, January 19, 2012 – The Camden Group, a leading national healthcare business advisory firm, continues to expand its expertise in key areas affected by healthcare reform. Joining the executive team are Virginia Tyler, FACHE, Peggy Crabtree, RN, and Marge Mercury, RN, who bring proven track records of success in strategic planning, service line management and managed care.

“Providers and health plans alike are undergoing fundamental change brought on by healthcare reform. Virginia, Peggy and Marge are ideally prepared to help healthcare organizations make the necessary transformations. Drawing on first-hand clinical and management experience at providers and health plans, they provide valuable knowledge and insight to our clients as they work on moving from our current fee-for-service system to the emerging fee-for-value model,” says Steven Valentine, president of The Camden Group.

Now part of The Camden Group’s Rochester office, Tyler previously ran her own consulting firm helping healthcare clients with governance, strategic planning, and mergers. Before moving into consulting, Tyler held multiple simultaneous roles with Thompson Health, including serving as vice president of strategic planning and business development, president of Finger Lakes Community Care Network and executive director of the Finger Lakes Community Care Network Independent Physician Association.

Crabtree, who is joining the Los Angeles office, previously was executive director of cardiovascular and imaging service lines for Huntington Memorial Hospital. Before that, she was South Bay Region service area director for clinical departments and service lines at Providence Health System Little Company of Mary Hospital and chief executive officer of Cardiology Consultants of the South Bay. She began her career as an emergency department nurse before moving into nursing administration.

Another addition to the Rochester office, Mercury headed network and business development for Evercare, a United Healthcare Company, before joining The Camden Group. She also was regional director of medical benefits management for Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield and vice president of managed care services for the Greater Rochester Independent Physician Association. She began her career as a nurse and nurse manager before moving into case management and then provider relations for health plans.

About The Camden Group

With offices  across the country, The Camden Group is one of the nation’s leading healthcare business advisory firms. The firm provides a broad array of healthcare consulting services in areas ranging from strategic and business planning and financial advisory and compliance, to hospital operations improvement, hospital/physician alignment, clinical integration, bundled payments, and developing accountable care organizations. Since its founding in 1970, The Camden Group has advised more than 1,000 hospitals, medical groups, outpatient facilities, and other healthcare organizations nationwide. For more information, visit us online at www.TheCamdenGroup.com.

Contact:

Sarita Choy, Marketing/Communications Director

The Camden Group

310.320.3990

schoy@thecamdengroup.com

www.thecamdengroup.com

The Camden Group Foresees New Care Models Taking Hold As Healthcare Reform Advances Amid Sluggish Economy

Los Angeles, California, January 5, 2012—The fragile recovery, presidential election year, and expected pivotal Supreme Court decision regarding mandating health insurance coverage will serve as a challenging backdrop this year for healthcare providers as they make more tough decisions about their future and that of the communities they serve. Struggling with rising costs, limited access to capital, and soft patient volumes, hospitals and physicians will increasingly turn to new relationships, mergers, and alliances as they transition to fee-for-value, according to The Camden Group’s annual Top Trends in Healthcare in 2012.

“While these are unsettling times for healthcare, uncertainty cannot be an excuse for paralysis,” says Steven T. Valentine, president of The Camden Group. “The reality is that healthcare reform is locking into place on schedule, and we expect it to continue as presently configured. Preparing to accept and manage financial risk for a defined population is a core competency that providers must develop in the next three years.”

The Camden Group predicts the following top trends:

• Top 3 priorities for hospital CEOs will be cutting costs, driving volume, and hospital-physician alignment.
  • To survive, operating costs must drop by 10 to 20 percent in the next three to five years.
  • The key is capturing greater market share while per capita use-rates continue to slide.
  • With health plans making medical group acquisitions, other medical groups and hospitals will become nervous about potential change in ownership and disruption of referral patterns.
  • Employment is a top choice for physicians intent on mitigating the unknown future of reimbursement, soft volume and development of new care models.
  • Co-management arrangements also will increase.

• The lackluster economy and high unemployment rate will hold down growth but not costs.
  • More people will opt for low premium, high deductible health plans, and both employed and unemployed will defer treatment whenever possible.
  • While most Medicaid payments are flat (or less), Medicare is up less than 2 percent, and many health plans are limiting increases to less than 5 percent. Medical groups and hospitals are coping with wage rates rising 3 percent or more, benefit costs going up 8 to 10 percent, and utility, supplies, and drug costs increasing at least 10 percent.

• Care model changes will accelerate while IT to support the new models consumes attention and capital. 
  • Development of medical homes and bundled payments will increase, and clinical integration will be pursued with or without accountable care organizations.
  • Hospitals will begin to consolidate case management, hospitalists, and intensivists into a centralized, coordinated function.
  • Case management services will be embedded in medical groups and extended to post-acute care. 
  • IT focus will be on meaningful use standards and ICD-10 conversion, with development of HIEs, ambulatory EMR, CPOE, enterprise data warehouses, and results reporting.

• Capital remains king.
  • Access to capital will continue to get tougher for nonprofits while for-profits will see their access increase.
  • Non-profits will boost fundraising efforts while lack of access forces independents to weigh their ability to go it alone.
  • Private equity and public companies will leverage their access to capital to expand their reach into healthcare. 
  • Health plans, with their huge cash reserves, also will invest in managed care capabilities and acquire physician provider groups. 

• The stronger get stronger while the weak merge…or else.
  • Struggling facilities and medical groups will continue to see markets consolidate as volume concentrates to the leaders.
  • With healthcare reform, as many as 1 in every 20 acute-care hospitals could close by 2020.
  • Also by 2020, most states will have a handful of large systems, with very few true independent hospitals without some type of alliance.

• C-suites will see higher turnover.
  • With all of the change due to healthcare reform, delivery models, inadequate payment, labor strife, and declining inpatient volume, new leaders will emerge.
  • C-suites will restructure and reduce management ranks.

About The Camden Group

With offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Boston, The Camden Group is one of the nation’s leading healthcare business advisory firms. The firm provides a broad array of healthcare consulting services in areas ranging from strategic and business planning and financial advisory and compliance, to hospital operations improvement, hospital/physician alignment, clinical integration, bundled payments, and developing accountable care organizations.  Since its founding in 1970, The Camden Group has advised more than 1,000 hospitals, medical groups, outpatient facilities, and other healthcare organizations nationwide. For more information, visit us online at www.TheCamdenGroup.com.

Contact:

Sarita Choy, Marketing/Communications Director

The Camden Group

310.320.3990

schoy@thecamdengroup.com

www.thecamdengroup.com

Los Angeles, California, September 1, 2010 — The Camden Group, one of the nation’s leading healthcare business advisory firms, continues to expand the firm’s expertise and resources to assist clients in response to healthcare reform with the addition of Deirdre M. Baggot, RN, MBA as vice president.   Ms. Baggot served as the administrator of the cardiac and vascular institute at Exempla Saint Joseph in Denver, Colorado, where she played a key role in helping the hospital win the bid to be selected as an Acute Care Episode (ACE) cardiovascular services bundled payment pilot program –one of four in the nation.   She subsequently developed and managed these services, achieving both cost savings and improvement in quality.   This news follows the announcement in May that the former CEO of Exempla Saint Joseph, Robert A. Minkin, has joined The Camden Group as well.

 “Our clients will really benefit from Deirdre’s expertise in designing and implementing bundled payments – from applying to be a CMS pilot site or more immediately, reaching out to commercial payers to bundle payments,”  said Steve Valentine, president of The Camden Group.   “We’re definitely seeing more and more commercial payers interested in bundling payments as a way to bend the cost curve, and for many hospitals, this is an opportunity they can’t afford to miss.”

In light of healthcare reform, The Camden Group has been rapidly growing its thought leadership team this past year by adding several senior members to the firm, including James Smith [formerly with Greater Rochester Independent Practice Association (“GRIPA”) and Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield), as well as seeking affiliation with innovative entities to provide clients access to industry-changing organizations.  These include GRIPA, one of the first in the nation to receive a favorable advisory opinion from the FTC on their clinical integration program, and Healthcare Partners, LLC, which operates as an accountable care organization with physician networks serving over 1,000,000 patients nationwide, including over 140,000 Medicare Advantage and 600,000 commercially insured members.

“Healthcare reform both poses new challenges to healthcare executives and tremendous opportunity to be at the forefront of re-engineering our healthcare delivery system,” said Baggot.  “The Camden Group has an excellent reputation for success with their clients, and I am thrilled to join the team at such an exciting and pivotal time for our industry.”

Prior to joining Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital in 2005, Ms. Baggot worked for ten years in academic healthcare, first at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and later at The University of Michigan Health System in strategic and leadership roles.

About The Camden Group

With offices in California, Illinois, and New York, The Camden Group is one of the nation’s leading healthcare business advisory firms. The firm provides a broad array of healthcare consulting services in areas ranging from strategic and business planning and financial advisory and compliance, to hospital operations improvement, hospital/physician alignment, clinical integration, and developing accountable care organizations. Since its founding in 1970, The Camden Group has advised more than 1,000 hospitals, medical groups, outpatient facilities, and other healthcare organizations nationwide. For more information, visit us online at www.thecamdengroup.com.  

Contact:

Sarita Choy, Marketing/Communications Director

The Camden Group

310.320.3990

schoy@thecamdengroup.com

www.thecamdengroup.com

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Facing declining patient volumes and tough economic times, hospitals have sought to minimize costs by reducing staff. Layoffs have been abundant as hospitals have attempted to get by with a leaner staff. However, prudent leadership teams should be mindful that any uptake in patient volume—driven, for example, by a bad flu season—can leave a hospital stranded and scrambling to increase staff. Also, consider the influx of the newly insured entering the healthcare system. The work demand of care providers such as internists, hospitalists, nurses, and personal care assistants will undoubtedly increase exponentially. It is important for health leaders to look forward and be prepared for a potential increase in demand, using all available tools, including one of the most valuable tools: a well-defined incentive program.

Click here to read the complete article written by Bonnie Barndt-Maglio, PhD, RN and published by Healthleaders Media on their site as well as their NursingLeaders e-newsletter.

Through our strategic alliance with Labor Management Institute (“LMI”), we are co-sponsoring LMI’s 2010 International Conference on Workforce Management. The theme of this year’s conference is “Creative Strategies for Maximizing Your Resources.” Several members of our team will be speaking at this event, including Frank Flosman, MBA, Bonnie Barndt-Maglio, PhD, RN, Patricia Hines PhD, RN, and Steve Valentine, MPA.  The conference will be held June 9-10, 2010 at the Green Valley Ranch Resort & Spa in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information, please download the brochure or visit www.lminstitute.com. We hope to see you there!

Firms’ integrated approach to help hospitals and other healthcare providers improve service delivery and operating performance

Los Angeles, California, and Bloomington, Minnesota, February 18, 2010— The Camden Group and Labor Management Institute (LMI) announced that they have formed a strategic alliance in order to better assist hospitals and other healthcare organizations in meeting the growing demand to improve quality of care while optimally managing costs and resources. 

“We are thrilled with the opportunity to collaborate with LMI and their president, Chrys-Marie Suby,” said Steve Valentine, president of The Camden Group.  “LMI is a highly respected advisory firm and a power house in the field of staffing, scheduling, and other workforce management issues.  By partnering with our multidisciplinary team of hospital operations experts, together we can provide a comprehensive approach to operations performance improvement for our clients.”

Both firms are national healthcare business advisory firms.  Additionally LMI conducts and publishes the Labor Management Institute’s Perspectives On Staffing & Scheduling (PSS™) Annual Survey of Hours Report©, now in its 20th year, to track and benchmark hours of care for direct, indirect, and total worked hours and caregiver to patient ratios for RNs, LPNs, and nursing assistants for 60 different unit types and 7 service lines at teaching, community, and rural hospitals.  The survey also tracks staffing trends and practices.  It was the first national benchmark for nursing and is the most comprehensive reference for caregiver ratios in the United States.  Over 350 hospitals participated in the survey in 2009. The PSS™ Annual Survey of Hours Report© was both cited and quoted in the 2004 Institute of Medicine Report, “Keeping Patients Safe; Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses.”

“The Camden Group has an excellent reputation for delivering sustained operating improvements in a conscientious and responsive manner – they are a respected industry leader,” said Chrys-Marie Suby.  “We share the same commitment to providing the highest quality consulting services to our clients, and we look forward to working together.”

This latest news follows the recent announcement by The Camden Group that it has added a new senior vice president, James R. Smith, MBA, FACHE, to head the firm’s advisory services in clinical integration and the development of accountable care organizations.  Smith is based out of The Camden Group’s new office in the New York area. 

The Camden Group provides a vast array of consulting services on areas ranging from hospital operations improvement, strategic, financial and business planning, and physician group advisory services. Since its founding in 1970, The Camden Group has advised more than 1,000 hospitals, medical groups, outpatient facilities, and other healthcare organizations nationwide. For more information, please visit http://www.thecamdengroup.com/index.php.

The Labor Management Institute provides research, education, and consulting services specializing in the area of clinical operations, scheduling and staffing systems, productivity management, and implementing innovative practical strategies that balance the workforce and workplace.  Since its founding in 1981, with Eunice Lawrenz (as Lawrenz Consulting), the Labor Management Institute has provided education and consulting services to more than 2,500 healthcare organizations both nationally and internationally. LMI also publishes the nationally recognized Perspectives On Staffing & Scheduling (PSS™) Newsletter,© now in its 29th year.  For more information, please visit http://www.lminstitute.com.

Contact:

Sarita Choy, Marketing/Communications Coordinator

The Camden Group

310.320.3990

schoy@thecamdengroup.com

www.thecamdengroup.com

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Come visit us at our booth at the ACNL conference on February 8, 2010.  Two of our vice presidents – Patricia Hines, Ph.D., RN and Bonnie Barndt-Maglio, Ph.D., RN will be available to discuss important issues that nurse managers face, such as nursing and staffing management, case management, and patient throughput.  They will be holding a raffle – enter your business card for a chance to win an Amazon Kindle!

For more information on the conference, check out ACNL’s website.