Beaumont Hospitals – From Two Hospitals to One Beaumont: Launching a New Strategy

Beaumont Hospitals have served southeast Michigan since 1955, growing from one small facility to a two-hospital regional medical center. Today, its medical staff includes more than 2,400 physicians representing more than 91 medical and surgical specialties. In 2006, Beaumont was embarking on a new strategy to unify the centers under a “OneBeaumont” banner.

The Business Need

Beaumont Hospitals leadership had an urgent need to communicate and operationalize a new strategy to internal and external stakeholders, which included physicians, nurses, donors, and local community leaders as well as employees. Although Beaumont had an excellent reputation and enviable share of the market, new local providers were offering improved services. In the face of aggressive competition, Beaumont recognized the need to “step up its game” to maintain its leadership position.

The new strategy focused on integrating the two hospitals into a single “OneBeaumont” entity. This required change across a number of fronts, from merging internal processes and departments to defining a culture and values, to the promotion of a common patient experience and continuum of care. In addition, Beaumont had a new CEO who was very vested in the need to change.

The Solution

Beaumont worked with Root Learning to create a suite of four Learning Map® modules to create a line of sight between the stakeholders and the new strategy. Together, the four modules – focusing on the marketplace, the strategic response, financial realities, and the “Beaumont Experience” – explained the details of the change, including the reasons for it and how teams and individuals could help support it.

Moreover the experience was designed to highlight the key drivers of success from both a financial and patient experience perspective, and ensure that all stakeholders were connected to and vested in the transformational effort.

Central to the solution was the process of developing the materials. The iterative and collaborative process, guided by visual metaphors, succeeded in aligning the project team and senior leadership group around the strategic imperatives – an unforeseen benefit that delivered exceptional value, according to CEO Ken Matzick.

Matzick also valued the ‘thought partnership’ that Root brought to the entire engagement, working side by side in a consultative capacity as an extended team.

Implementation

Implementation was thoroughly planned and comprehensive, and sponsored at every milestone by the senior leadership team. This advocacy and detail clearly added to the success of the project.

A cascaded approach was used to deploy the modules to 16,000 employees in 120 sessions over a 13-week period. The first event involved 400 top leaders, physicians, and board members in two days. As the visual metaphor was nautical, participants were issued “boarding passes” and a takeaway was designed as a passport. Matzick intro-duced each session using “nautical” language. His introduction was taped and used at subsequent employee sessions. Employees went through the modules in four-hour sessions at a central training facility. Bus transportation was provided, and employees were paid to attend. Pre- and post-experience surveys were electronically fielded on representative content to measure knowledge transfer. An LMS was used for registration and attendance tracking.

Facilitators were carefully selected and trained. Some key facilitators served as a feedback loop and helped identify ways to drive further implementation and bring everyone together under the OneBeaumont umbrella.

Results

Leadership feels that the methodology of self-discovery and dialogue has become “hard-wired” into the OneBeaumont culture.

Today, the modules have been added to the onboarding experience, linking all strategic goals back to OneBeaumont and providing critical context. The core project team remains intact and will serve as the nexus for a new leadership council leading new initiatives.

“The Root team was dedicated, responsive, insightful, and productive throughout the process,” said Matzick. “We’re very pleased with the early results of our efforts to engage our employees in understanding and implementing our strategic plan. Feedback was very positive, and many commented that they couldn’t wait for their staffs to go through the learning experience.”