Nobody brings expertise at everything. Anybody who claims to do everything well is at best delusional, anybody who believes them…well, draw your own conclusions. I always push my clients to focus their human resources and capital investments on their key strategic priorities. I strive to do the same myself. Walters and Associates aims to help clients conclude on their strategic priorities, determine whether their facilities and operations can support those strategies, and identify the best value solutions to close any identified gaps.
Detailed Strategic Planning and Medical Staff Planning
While we are perfectly comfortable helping forecast demand and developing basic strategic plans to support sound facility planning, we don’t develop detailed service line strategic plans. We don’t develop detailed medical staff development plans. If you need these services, we recommend you call Kristin Anderson of Halsa Advisors at 612.770.2671.
Supporting Operations Improvement through Culture Change
While Walters and Associates can work with you to improve operations, we have found successful implementation of change occurs most readily when the culture of the organization empowers staff to work together and guide change within their functional areas and across the organization. As often as not, attempts to force change by fiat from above result in frustration and failure. If your organization resists change and has struggled in previous attempts to implement change, we recommend you call Mike Boguszewski or Ken Bast of Hospital Focus 5 at 952.953.3684
Technical Facility Assessment and Planning
While Walters and Associates can assess the functional aspects of your facility, we are not engineers. Technical shortcomings can also play a role in making sound decisions about the future viability of your hospital or other health care facility. Walters and Associates has worked closely with Frederick Lerouge of Control Management, Inc. on several midwestern projects to assess mechanical and low-voltage systems and incorporate their repair and modernization into facility master plans. These systems can support (or fail to support) the successful adoption of cutting edge operating models and efficiencies. Frederick can be reached at 402.571.9454.
Information Technology Planning
Information technology typically ranks next to facilties in capital commitment. Scott Walters has worked with Paul Murphy, of Kurt Salmon Associates’ IT consulting practice, to help clients craft integrated facility and IT master plans. Integrating these plans helps coordinate capital investment, coordinate roll-out of IT systems with expansion or renovation of facilities, and helps make sure IT resources will be adequate to support expected operational change upon which a new facility may be predicated. Paul may be reached via email at paul.murphy or by phone at 678-662-4350.
Project Management/Owner’s Representative
Most smaller hospitals or health care systems don’t tackle multi-million projects every year, perhaps they take on a major project once a decade. Hiring an experienced construction professional full time to oversee the process doesn’t make sense. Nonetheless, even five to ten million dollar projects can easily spin out of control, and the resulting delay, finger-pointing and administrative headaches can make the most experienced health care executive wish they had never decided to upgrade their facility. An experienced owner’s representative or project manager can prevent exactly these traumas to executive leadership and the Board. Jim Young, with Align Healthcare, brings a wealth of experience to hospitals and systems of every size. He’s managed projects at large systems and small hospitals, in big cities and small towns. You can reach Jim at 877.254.4642 extension 82.