In this Priorities, Plans & Perspectives interview, Skilled Nursing News sits down with Mark Fritz, President at Bridgemoor Transitional Care, to learn how he navigates uncertainty and change, both inside and outside of his organization.
Read on to discover how Fritz has had success with a hands off approach to the execution of strategic plans, and how his organization is driving quality improvement, education and communication as we come out of the pandemic.
Skilled Nursing News: What was your first job title in health care or health care technology, and how has your perspective changed since then?
Mark Fritz: My first title was CEO. I guess I started at the top. When I first got in back in the 80s, the majority of skilled nursing facilities were owned by small companies or mom-and-pop operators. I think the service they provided back then was more focused on custodial care, where you would see the ladies out on the front porch knitting and the guys sitting around the table playing dominoes or cards.
Then, the assisted living model evolved and took that market away from skilled nursing. In the operations we run, skilled nursing is primarily looked at as a sub-acute care setting with a more professional, clinical-type model. This is where the industry has moved.
I think the industry is still trying to identify itself somewhat, because long-term care versus short-term care, to me, is a little fragmented right now. I feel like in the near future, that’ll be better defined.
SNN: Who has made the greatest influence on your perspective?
Fritz: First, I’ve been blessed with amazing mentors through my career, but I think the greatest influencer I had was a gentleman named Dick Sweden, who was the CEO of a major hospital. Back in 2001, he asked me if he was able to set aside a few acres on the hospital campus, if I would consider building a 40-bed short-term stay, Medicare managed care facility, to help get the patients out of the hospital sooner.
That was back in 2001, but it was the seed that was planted for what we did on the transitional care side.
I’ve been blessed to have many. Starting with my dad, there have been several gentlemen that took me under their wing and kept me from falling out of the nest too soon.
SNN: How do you define and execute your professional priorities?
Fritz: I think sometimes, we make things a little more complicated than they really are. We overthink them many times, but in our company, we work together as a team and combine input from our facilities to put a plan together and attack it. Typically, that’s where I step back and let the teams get it done, and it’s worked very well for us.
SNN: What are three of those priorities?
Fritz: Just this year, our three major priorities are quality improvement, education and communication. We’re always striving to improve quality and outcomes, which drives our efforts in education and communication. The application of data results and continuous, quality improvement fit together well.
Communication through COVID was the eye of the hurricane. We didn’t feel like we were in a position where we should be with our hospital systems and managed care companies, so we focused on that for the first part of the year.
We had gotten back with our hospital systems, because the hospital systems weren’t looking at quality outcomes as everyone was coming out from under the cloud. Getting back and rekindling those relationships with our outcomes was very successful. Quality improvement, education, and communication were three of the priorities we focused on.
SNN: How do you look at planning when there is a large degree of uncertainty involved?
Fritz: We take what we know to be true or to be a fact, and we then couple it with input from our hospital systems and managed care companies. We look around at what other companies are doing well, combine it into a path with parameters and make sure we are keeping our patients’ health care first through all of it.
Some of it is has to be a little bit of an educated guess, but if you watch the acute setting, we usually are very close behind them. That’s why I feel like having that communication is so important in the big picture.
SNN: How do you keep track of your professional plans and progress?
Fritz: That’s something we struggled with for a while. When we’re putting together any plan or new directive, it has to be something we can measure. We start with measurable plans and goals upfront, then we can bridge that with our technology to monitor what we’re doing. The key is having a great EMR and a great analytic tool that enables us to know where we’re at at any time. I’m a big believer in: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. That’s where we are.
SNN: What do you do when something doesn’t go according to plan?
Fritz: When things don’t go exactly as planned, it rocks my world a little bit, but I’ve learned to manage it. First and foremost, we peel the onion and get to the root cause as quickly as possible to find out why it happened. Then, we put a plan together to get back on track and monitor where we are and what progress we’re making so we are moving back into the right position.
There are advantages and disadvantages to being a small operator and being a large operator. As a small operator, when things aren’t going as planned, this question allows us to be able to analyze it quickly and then immediately make the necessary changes to get back on track.
SNN: What do you listen to, read, or watch to gain perspective?
Fritz: Well, I would be negligent if I didn’t say I read the Skilled Nursing News. It keeps me in the know about everything, but I do read most of the industry publications. I think all too many times — I include myself on this — leaders of the company fail to get out into the facility and talk to the staff and patients.That’s what puts things into perspective.
When I see what our staff has to deal with in their day-to-day and talk to the patients, it helps align my perspective with our patients’ perspectives and our staff’s perspectives. I live on a ranch, so I will get on the tractor and mow a few acres to slow things down and connect all the dots. But I think being in the facilities really keeps my perspective in line with what we should be doing.
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