Spotting a polar bear here on the Treasure Coast in July or August is definitely not a common occurrence.
At least, it isn’t unless the polar bear in question just happens to be Dr. Mark Girard, a graduate of Maine’s Bowdoin College (whose mascot is the polar bear) as well as Harvard Medical School.
Girard, an interventional radiologist, also happens to be the president of the Steward Health Care Network, which in February purchased Sebastian River Medical Center along with the Wuesthoff medical centers in Melbourne and Rockledge.
Three months later, Steward set in motion a merger with IASIS Healthcare LLC, a Tennessee-based company that operates 18 hospitals. If approved, the merger will make Boston-based Steward the largest for-profit hospital operator in the country, with 36 hospitals in 10 states.
Girard was in town last week to visit SRMC and the newly acquired medical centers in Brevard County and talk about how Steward plans to improve healthcare at the three facilities.
“The first thing we’re trying to do,” explains Girard, is “implement our model of a physician-led integrated delivery system … [that is] fundamentally different than anything else that’s happened down here.”
Change – at least in terms of ownership – is nothing new at SRMC. The hospital first opened its doors in 1974. In 1978 it was purchased by Humana Corp., which in turn sold it to Health Management Associates in 1993. In 2014, HMA was acquired by Community Health Systems, which sold SRMC to Steward earlier this year, making the Boston-based company the fifth owner of the Sebastian hospital.
What is new is the Steward model.
In the past two decades, many U.S. hospitals chose a centralized approach to healthcare, buying individual physicians’ practices and putting those physicians directly on hospital payrolls, often swelling costs and driving consumer prices upward.
Steward’s model, according to Girard, is different. “We don’t think of ourselves as just a hospital company. We think of ourselves as a physician-led integrated delivery system. We try to coordinate care from the home to the hospital and really encourage and collaborate with [other] providers to do the right care in the right location and in the right amount.
“We collaborate with all providers. Our goal is to achieve the highest quality care we can in the most cost-efficient manner that we can that is accessible, affordable and sustainable.”
Becker’s Hospital Review cites Steward as one of the “integrated health systems to know” with its focus on “the continuum of care from wellness and preventive services to urgent care, inpatient care and outpatient care.”
Steward turns to data, analytics and, in some cases, proprietary software to accomplish its goals and make its healthcare model more efficient.
That, says Girard, includes much more than just the advanced electronic medical records system that allows all Steward providers instant access to patient medical records both in and out of the hospital.
“We’re a very analytic-driven organization,” Girard says warming up to the topic. “It’s not about what we think [might be] the right thing to do, it’s about looking at what the data tells us is the right thing to do,” adding that, “We’ll begin to improve care where we think there’s a quality opportunity and fill service-line gaps where we think that there are needs here in the community.
“We know that there’s a lot of care done in a hospital-based setting that if you did it in a more convenient location, whether it’s a doctor’s office or a lab out in the community – whatever the case may be – you could reduce total medical expense by 10 or 15 percent with comparable quality,” according to Girard.
“Our goal is to make this work for the people of Rockledge, the people of Melbourne and the people here in the Sebastian River area. If we’re doing our job [they] should see better care that’s more affordable and more accessible with a focus on keeping you well and not just treating you when you’re sick.”
Girard is now back at Steward headquarters in Boston but the specific recommendations he makes for Sebastian, Rockledge and Melbourne will soon be going into effect at all three Treasure Coast facilities.
