Trios Health: Turning the corner from a challenging year

The past year has been one for the books at Trios Health. It brought a deluge of serious challenges and the often painful and perpetual cycle of change that necessarily comes with facing them.

In February, I joined Trios Health after the Kennewick Public Hospital District board exercised its right to change leadership under its contract with Quorum Health Resources, the firm hired to assist with a financial and operational turnaround in 2017.

Craig Cudworth led Trios Health through several important moments last year. Through the challenges, my employer—Quorum—remained behind the scenes following the progress and supporting the efforts. It’s important that the Tri-Cities community understands that, with the changes to leadership in February, the organization has not and will not lose ground. I will continue to work from the solid foundation laid by Craig.

Last year was incredibly challenging. There is no single reason for the distress the organization has been facing, but rather a perfect storm of reasons that had inopportunely combined to put our long-term viability at risk. And, in fact, much of what we’ve been experiencing is not unique to Trios Health or even this part of the country. The healthcare industry is in flux nationwide, and many smaller health systems are struggling to survive it.

Among the stressors for those of us on the care delivery side, specific provisions and general uncertainty surrounding healthcare reform have caused a nationwide decline in volumes as people wait longer to access the services they need.

Additionally, fewer of our patients have private insurance coverage than ever before, resulting in pennies-on-the-dollar reimbursements with growing frequency for provided services — at a time when the cost of labor and supplies needed to offer those same services continues to increase.

And there is a national shortage of primary care physicians beginning to affect front-line access to healthcare, which is a critical referral mechanism to support services and specialty providers.

To minimize the cost of service delivery while upholding care quality standards, Trios Health implemented a workforce productivity model in 2017 that helps us track and adjust staffing levels based on actual patient volumes. This ensures our workforce is exactly the size and makeup it needs to be to meet patient demand and, in turn, that we are keeping our single-largest annual expense in check.

This closer examination of workforce productivity metrics revealed the need for an initial downward adjustment in our workforce in April 2017, followed by another early this year. While it was painful to lose the individuals affected by these staffing reductions, it was a necessary step toward sustainably improved organizational health.

As is becoming standard in the healthcare industry, we will continue to use the productivity model going forward such that any additional fluctuations in our staffing levels will only come as a direct result of our community’s demand for services.

We’re also doing a number of things in the pursuit of a stronger primary care base, in response to the provider shortages we’re seeing locally and nationally. We are refocusing organizational growth strategies in this area, and stepping up recruitment efforts for additional family and internal medicine providers.

While it may seem counterintuitive that one would recruit more doctors during a time of financial hardship, we simply must have the resources and expertise in place to care for our growing population, and primary care is where it all starts.

The other way we’ve proactively sought to recruit primary care providers is through the family and internal medicine residency programs we established in 2013. The first two classes of residents have now graduated from our programs, and a few of them have opted to stay on board post-residency. Our role in training the physicians of tomorrow is one we take seriously and hope to continue benefitting from in the form of provider retention.

In addition to all of this, our discussions with RCCH Healthcare Partners and UW Medicine about a strategic affiliation continue with optimism. Our hope is that by publication time, there will be positive news to share about a path forward that includes our rapid emergence from Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Trios Health has seen better days than we did in 2017. But at the same time, we truly believe better days are just ahead. We thank you for your support, and ask that you continue putting your faith in us in the years ahead. We’re with you now, and we plan to be with you in the future.

This story was originally published April 2, 2018 at 2:24 PM with the headline "Trios Health: Turning the corner from a challenging year."