Developing Structure around a New Business Venture in Healthcare

Opportunity

The healthcare industry is constantly innovating. Pepper Foster had the opportunity to engage with a new healthcare venture group that was seeking to open three occupational health clinics. The clinics would be independently operated and built from the ground up, and involved multiple parallel work streams to operate in close coordination. Pepper Foster was brought on board in order to develop, lead and implement a comprehensive set of policies & procedures based on industry best practices. This also included coordinating and integrating with other business/technology teams and helping to drive and implement the system that would manage and drive the workflow of policies & procedures going forward.

Solution

Pepper Foster worked closely with the business and occupational health directors to align key stakeholders,  define success criteria, and establish and prioritize key areas that must be covered by the policies and procedures. Additionally, Pepper Foster sought feedback from physicians, physical therapists, EMR specialists and personnel team leads to ensure both front-office and back-office operations were included in the initial framework. Once the comprehensive list was compiled, Pepper Foster met with stakeholders to better define the minimum set of policies (or Minimum Viable Product, MVP) required for opening on Day One in order to drive the most efficiency and value for the client.  Overall, Pepper Foster prioritized nearly 250 policies into eight major buckets based on the metric equation of need x impact for aligning key Go-Live decision making. Assumptions, risks, and workstream dependencies were identified, monitored and addressed on a weekly basis to efficiently and effectively ensure overall project stability and success. For storage, accessibility and version-control,  Pepper Foster engaged a cloud-based document management system designed for medical policies and procedures. As Site Administrator for the DMS, Pepper Foster actively managed the upload, revision, and final approval tracking of the prioritized policies & procedures, freeing up the business director’s bandwidth. 

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Outcome

By the end of the tight 11-week engagement, Pepper Foster had successfully delivered all the defined policies and procedures that were readily accessible and the overall setup of the DMS tool . By advocating and providing close coordination between workstreams, it allowed for early identification and removal of critical dependencies. Overall, the initial engagement ended on time and was met with such great success, that the client extended Pepper Foster to take on additional scope around leading the procurement of medical equipment. Currently, the client is still diligently working towards their goal date for their new venture, while engaging with Pepper Foster to discuss and plan where it makes sense to partner next.