Challenge

Wooster Community Hospital Health System is a 172-bed, full-service and acute-care facility primarily serving the residents of Wayne County, Ohio. For the seventh time, in 2021 IBM Watson Health™ named Wooster one of the nation’s 100 Top Hospitals for its clinical, operational and patient satisfaction performance. Wooster sought a more effective way to engage the entire community living in its service area. Interviews and publicly available data indicated the Amish community in its service area tend to delay care and has higher than expected late-stage breast and prostate cancers.

Octave Leadership Advisory Services’ Solutions

Wooster worked with Octave to complete its 2020 – 2023 strategic plan. To better serve the Amish community, Octave’s strategists recommended they build on their existing efforts such as an Amish community liaison and an urgent care center within the community with two new initiatives:

• Locating a nurse practitioner near the community and publicizing cash prices for services. As noted in a recent Yahoo Finance article, Wooster provides, “…a tool to estimate the cost of care, make(s) their financial assistance plans easy to understand and utilize, and include(s) an explanation of their chargemaster and a price list on their website.”
• Enhancing the self-pay package to include spine services. Given the prevalence of manual labor, Amish elders identified a high need for spine surgery in their community.

Results

Wooster Hospital’s efforts to improve their Amish community market share are working, and as a result, the percentage of revenues from the Amish community have increased 3+ percent.

Client Quote

“As the result of our strategy work with Octave, Wooster is better meeting our Amish patients where they are, and engaging them in their health earlier. Patient satisfaction is higher as are our revenues.”

Bill Sheron
Chief Executive Officer
Wooster Community Hospital Health System