Contributions to El Camino Hospital

By John Zoglin

The most significant contributions I have made as a member of the El Camino Hospital District Board as well as the El Camino Hospital Board include (consistent with the commitments I made in 2008)

• Aligning with tri-annual assessment of care gaps in Santa Clara County (the hospital spent more money to ensure a broader survey of the northern Santa Clara County citizens we serve)
• Working closely with a broad range of community organizations providing expertise not just money. We established a philosophy that we would: only contribute financially when we could also contribute our expertise, serve as a focal point, coordinating efforts among community organizations and work with organizations to improve their metrics, quality and accountability:

o June 7, 2012 Sunnyvale School District passed a resolution recognizing El Camino Hospital District's ongoing commitment to addressing persistent unmet health needs for students in the District. Over three years, the District has provided more than $1.1 million in grants to fund a variety of programs that have helped more than 19,000 students. "The El Camino Hospital District is a true partner that ensures we have the resources we need to help our students cope with physical and emotional issues that often impact academic performance," said Dr. Ben Picard, superintendent, Sunnyvale School District. "We are proud of all we've been able to accomplish together over the last three years and look forward to an enduring partnership."

o In November 2011 El Camino Hospital was awarded the Outstanding Corporate Grant Maker Award at Silicon Valley Philanthropy Day by Association of Fundraising Professionals. We were recognized for the value we provide to our partners:

• "El Camino Hospital has taken a leadership role in facilitating close working relationships between its various community partners, to optimize their overall contributions to community health improvement."
• "El Camino Hospital has been at the forefront of corporate grant making, supporting innovative best practices models...The hospital takes an analytical and systematic approach to their Community Benefit efforts."
• "Like a well managed Venture Capital Fund, El Camino Hospital invests in social change for the betterment of the community...They collect meaningful data to assess program effectiveness, thus contributing to the body of knowledge in social innovation."

With expectations for boards' responsibilities significantly expanding, particularly over the past decade or so, we have adopted Best Practices by moving from handling most all our responsibilities as a board of five members to a structure where much of the board's work is done in six committees before discussing and deciding at the board level. These six committees are: Quality and Patient Experience, Finance, Investment, Executive Compensation, Governance and Audit, Compliance and Patient Safety.

We conducted a broad search for people throughout the community with deep subject matter expertise. Not only did we reach out to existing committees of the hospital such as our community advisory boards and other committees like the Chinese Health Initiative, but also we advertised broadly in local papers and engaged recruiting firms.

We have just completed naming three new El Camino Hospital Board Members and 21 Committee members. These people provide an incredible depth of subject matter expertise that will improve the guidance and oversight we can provide to the management team as we navigate these turbulent times in the health care industry.

Strategic process and organization dashboard- I have also been a major instigator and encourager of El Camino Hospital migrating to Best Practices in our Strategic Process. Over the past two years the executive team and board have worked together to develop a consistent and rigorous approach to strategic analysis. We are creating a meaningful corporate dashboard that:
1. Serves as the primary tool for the board to ensure that the strategy is being executed via operating and financial plans
2. Nests down throughout the organization such that each person working at the hospital has a direct line of site from their individual responsibility up to specific organization metrics

Cost Cutting to improve affordability and profitability -- While not as crushing for El Camino Hospital as it is for many of our residents and their families as well as hospital employees, the 2008 recession from which we are maybe just emerging has taken its toll on healthcare providers around the country. Volumes are down as fewer people are covered and those that do have healthcare coverage and putting off elective care.

Evidence Based Medicine. We are working to reinvigorate our commitment to data driven decisions. The two foundational elements are not just data but also analysis. To improve our data collection we have been working with physicians, both independent and at major partners like PAMF and Stanford, to ensure that they use electronic health records and that they can easily share the data with the hospital.

With forthcoming expansion in available data, I have been encouraging administration to ensure we develop our ability to analyze the data - a need that requires not only analysts focused on the data, but evolving into a culture of analysis where everyone is trained to approach care in a data driven manner.