AMC Management & Business Planning
With increasing financial, regulatory, and operational pressures, AMC management has become more complex and challenging. Consequently, AMC leaders are looking to better manage the resources they have to ensure the success and growth of their institutions.
Drawing upon our broad experience with AMCs and expertise in financial and organizational management, ECG assists AMC leadership in a variety of ways, including:
Resource Management
ECG helps you to simplify the collecting and reporting of data so leadership can easily understand where the AMC stands operationally and financially and how the AMC compares to goals – then we use that information to identify where to strategically invest resources. We develop reports and metrics that focus on key areas of success across the clinical, teaching, and research missions. While a change in culture for many SOMs, the revised management approach becomes one that drives your organization to greater success and achievement of school-wide goals.
Business Planning
Expanding an AMC requires accurate, detailed, and informed business planning. Our commitment to your academic industry ensures that we bring an unsurpassed level of understanding to your planning efforts. Whether it is developing a multidisciplinary cancer center or a department-based clinic, we can assist from concept to implementation, and connect the myriad of dots between.
Organizational Design
The complex environment in which AMCs operate requires faculty leadership to have access to a high level of administrative expertise. ECG works with you to determine the most appropriate management structure for your AMC, SOM department, or faculty practice plan (FPP) organization. This may be through creating traditional management structures or moving the AMC toward nontraditional approaches such as cluster management. As you decide upon and refine an alternative, ECG assists in developing a plan to migrate to the new structure, while focusing on the overall implications to the institution as well as your individual departments/units.
Selected Projects
Developing a mission-based management (MBM) framework and allocation guidelines. Expand Minimize
A public SOM in the Midwest was faced with reductions in state appropriations and increased pressures from academic health center and university leadership for more efficient and rational management of financial resources. ECG assisted the client in developing an MBM reporting framework to enhance the SOM’s and departments’ decision-making process regarding resource allocation and the use of available funds. The framework included approaches for tracking faculty effort expectations; preparing all-funds and mission-based income statements; identifying performance metrics in the areas of teaching, research, and patient care activities; and creating summary MBM reports to provide meaningful information to department and SOM leadership.
Evaluating the effectiveness of the SOM administrative model. Expand Minimize
ECG validated the financial and operational benefits of an SOM’s consolidated administrative model and developed four key recommendations for improving the model’s performance and effectiveness. Our review indicated that the current model was providing quality administrative services and that moving to independent administrative teams for each department would require approximately $3.0 million in annual incremental costs. Subsequent to implementation, the client reported that the anticipated cost savings were realized, and service levels increased.
Developing fund allocation principles to guide SOM strategic plan development. Expand Minimize
A public SOM in the western U.S. wanted to increase its national prominence through the recruitment and retention of quality faculty members. ECG assisted the client in identifying and prioritizing educational and service activities for which state funds would be provided, as well as documented a set of allocation principles. Subsequently, the potential impact of these principles was determined by a financial model based on the SOM’s curriculum and other documentation. The results of the model provided the school’s leadership with objective information to guide future resource allocation decisions. The allocation principles served as a key component of a planning retreat, during which the SOM executive committee evaluated the priorities and initiatives included in the school’s strategic plan.
Reviewing the surgical department administrative infrastructure at a private SOM. Expand Minimize
ECG assessed the administrative model and resources across all surgical departments at a private SOM. Our in-depth interviews with department leadership and review of current staffing levels and reporting relationships resulted in the development of a revised administrative model as well as redesigned management and reporting packages that were approved and implemented by department and SOM leadership.
Conducting an operational assessment of the physician support infrastructure at a public SOM. Expand Minimize
As part of a larger assignment to develop a business plan for a public SOM and its practice plan and teaching hospital affiliates, ECG evaluated the scope, efficiency, and effectiveness of the clinical support infrastructure. Based on our analysis of current operational statistics and interviews with representatives from all three entities, we developed a set of recommendations that combined or changed their various capabilities to support physicians and identified more than $600,000 in immediate savings on overhead costs.
