Intermountain Healthcare’s decision to reimagine its delivery care model by eliminating its regional structure may be just the beginning of changes ahead for the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit system.
Marc Harrison, M.D., president and CEO, told the Deseret News that system leaders will be looking at all its options as it restructures in order to “disrupt” the organization and remain a model healthcare system in the next five years.
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Last month, Intermountain announced plans to overhaul its internal structure based on geographic administrative regions in favor of a new system that will focus on community care and specialty care to allow the organization’s caregivers and leaders at its 22 hospitals and 180 clinics to provide faster, more direct care to patients. Employees will either fall under the community care group that emphasizes prevention and primary care or the specialty group that focuses on inpatient care and specialty care. The changes take effect on Friday.
Harrison called the new structure One Intermountain and told the newspaper the changes would ensure consistency in operations as well as the patient and employee experience. The changes, he said, allow Intermountain to "disrupt ourselves" and make healthcare more affordable.
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"I think the way that we’re doing (the restructuring), I hope it’s the most respectful way possible, (is) to get our very skillful people to now think about in each of those areas how we play as a whole system, not just as an individual hospital and not just as a region, but a whole team," Harrison told the publication.
Although the organization said last month that most of its 39,000 employees would see little or no change from the new structure, Harrison admitted in the article that staff were uneasy about the restructuring plan. But for the vast majority of employees, he said, their jobs would remain the same on Friday.