SSM Healthcare to Restructure

By Mary Jo Feldstein, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Dec. 21–SSM Healthcare-St. Louis said Thursday that it will restructure the hospital system to strengthen its focus on innovation, efficiency and patient care.

The reorganization divides SSM’s local hospitals into two regional entities. It also creates another organizational structure that will focus on treating individual diseases and conditions.

“We looked at the locations of the various institutions and felt like there were logical groups that could work more effectively together,” said Jim Sanger, chief executive of SSM-St. Louis. “We’re trying to leverage our overall work force and assets. What we’re trying to do is to figure out how we can best deliver … services throughout the region.”

SSM will create “service lines” such as cancer care and cardiac care. Each will be headed by a hospital executive. So the president of an SSM hospital could also be responsible for managing cancer care at all SSM hospitals throughout the region. It hasn’t been determined who will be in charge of each service line.

Through these service lines, SSM will use patient demand and other factors to determine which hospitals should provide which services. It also will study medical evidence and consult with physicians about how care should be provided. The hope is to determine the best courses of treatment for different conditions and adopt them systemwide. Organizing care this way is designed to help ensure access while preventing the duplication of services.

The plan merges two trends in health care — standardizing care based on scientific evidence, and adding enough services without driving up costs through overbuilding.

Burl Stamp, a health care consultant, said the most successful plans for service lines are developed across hospitals, as SSM is doing.

“It allows an individual or group of individuals to think about care across different sites and different levels … really in the way that a patient and family thinks about it,” said Stamp, who founded Clayton-based Stamp & Chase Inc. He has worked as a consultant for SSM, but not on this project.

These are the first major changes announced under Sanger, who ascended to chief executive in November. He was chief executive of St. Mary’s Good Samaritan Inc., a two-hospital joint operating venture in southwestern Illinois. One of the hospitals is owned by SSM.

SSM’s six local hospitals and its behavioral health and rehabilitation services will be broken into north and south regions. This will “get more done more quickly,” Sanger said. Even functions such as finance and human resources will be split between the regions and in some cases among the service lines.

Steve Johnson, the current president of DePaul Health Center, will become the executive vice president of operations for the north region. He will oversee DePaul Health Center, St. Joseph Health Center, St. Joseph Hospital West and SSM Behavioral Medicine.

Mike Graue, the current executive vice president for St. Louis network operations, will become the executive vice president of operations for the south region. Graue will oversee Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center, St. Mary’s Health Center, and St. Joseph Hospital of Kirkwood, which will be the future St. Clare Health Center and SSM Rehab.

mjfeldstein@post-dispatch.com

314-340-8209

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