Lutheran’s 2024 word of the year: Disruption
By Allan Brants, MD, Lutheran Chief of Staff
Lutheran’s 2024 word of the year is “disruption.” In a relatively short time, we’ve endured three seismic shifts at Lutheran that continue to rumble: the move to the new hospital, the merger with Intermountain and the Kaiser withdrawal. The ground we’re standing on has not yet settled.
Although sudden change can make individuals feel powerless, as physicians we have more agency than most. We can control our response and choose the measures we take to best manage any long-term consequences.
And in that way, change is familiar territory. As physicians, we have been trained to make rational, calibrated responses to unanticipated challenges and to plan for the downstream mitigation of disease. These learned skills, repeated daily throughout our careers, serve us well during periods of disorienting change and disruption.
Take Moving Day last August as an example. It is difficult to bear sufficient witness to the amount of GI distress and brain damage that “The Move” generated during its preparation. But I’m still impressed by the memory of that day. Twenty ambulances moved 122 patients from the old campus to the new campus, safely and without incident, in just eight hours. It was flawless. Dozens of you assisted in the planning, and every one of you working that day was essential in the execution. Thank you for your focus on our patients, that day and every day.
Following the move, there have been challenges: the inevitable physical issues with a new facility, an expected drop in patient volume, a reordering of market forces. These factors are worrisome, given the resources invested, but that worry is giving way to optimism. Facility issues are being addressed methodically, volumes are gradually rebounding, and early reports indicate an improvement in payor mix.
With regard to the Intermountain merger, those of you old enough to remember Lutheran’s history with such things know that mergers proceed in several phases:
Quiescent phase: Not much happens, business as usual.
Proliferative phase: Hospital signage change, administrative reshuffling.
Active phase: As new leaders step into their roles and begin to execute their vision, the changes that come with integration accelerate. In 2025, it seems likely that we will enter the active phase. We shall see.
The Kaiser withdrawal has given us all a front row seat to one of the more frightening spectacles that corporate medicine can produce. Although Lutheran is not projected to face the losses and practitioner/patient displacement suffered by our sister hospitals, it’s unrealistic to think that we will be completely unaffected. We might be asked to help shoulder the work of reorganization and rebuilding, and we should welcome the opportunity to mitigate this disaster. The colleagues and patients involved did not ask for, nor deserve, what has been visited upon them. If you can help, please do so.
Managing the business of the medical staff in any year isn’t easy, but the added pressures of 2024 required extra commitment. I’d like to thank our support team, Georgeann Bell, Brooke Salazar and Brook Monchak. They do a fantastic job managing the medical staff so this whole operation can run smoothly. We couldn’t do it without them.
Dr. Aram Neuschatz, chair of Peer Review, and Dr. Jeff DesJardin, chair of Credentials, and their committee members also belong in the bucket of people who continue to dedicate themselves to the necessary business of the medical staff, benefitting us and our patients, all within this disruptive swirl. They’ve certainly made my job as COS a lot easier.
So has our CMO, Dr. Kathy Crabtree. She’s been an excellent partner as I’ve advocated on your behalf in response to everything new: new campus, new clinical relationships, new leadership, new platforms and more. As most of you know, Kathy is a Lutheran “homer,” with a long history of commitment to our hospital. We’ve had productive conversations about how we can optimize our care and experience in this still shifting world, and I trust her judgment to see us through.
Patience. Ours has been tested, and every day we get to choose how to respond. Keep this in mind: Not every year will be as disruptive as 2024. In fact, in the next six months, a lot will play out that will offer some stability.
Our newly merged enterprise will continue to reorient, firmly setting its structure, its leadership and the processes that connect all of us.
We’ll understand better how Kaiser’s decisions will impact the movement of our cases, those revenues and our colleagues’ futures.
Lutheran will reestablish its referral patterns and regain the ambulance traffic lost after the move across I-70, further solidifying our position in the market.
Disruptions happen, but they don’t need to upend our purpose. We control our commitment to the care we provide and the effect we have on the lives of the patients who need us. Let’s do that, help where we can, offer opinions when asked, and wait for it all to play out.
Thank you for your confidence and partnership. Cheers to all of us in 2025.