Tracking Health Outcomes to Build Trust with Physicians and Participants [Podcast Series]
[:54] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, David Flench
David Flench is President and CEO of the Medical Fitness Association.
He was previously Director of Wellness Centers and Diabetes Education at Hancock Regional Hospital.
[1:12] Medical fitness pathway
“And all the while I was very involved with the Medical Fitness Association, and whether it was committees or I ended up getting on the board of directors and becoming the chairman of the board. And then, then that all culminated when the former CEO of MFA retired, and I jumped at that opportunity. So it was really, I think, lots of opportunities through MFA, lots of networking that led me down the entire path that I just walked you through for my medical fitness career.”
[6:32] Medical and commercial fitness differences
“One of the key aspects is tracking the outcomes for participants and for the program as a whole. Because really making sure that what you're doing is working for these people. That's important, not only for the individual themselves to be seeing those types of results and hearing those types of outcomes, but it's important for the physicians, the medical community who's referring into these programs to know what’s happening.”
[11:12] Medical fitness strategic priorities
“You can't have all the great mission based services without them being financially sustainable. But, we tracked KPIs for customer service and quality and employee satisfaction, retention, community impact. So, so, really, strategy was important to address all of those areas.”
[14:15] Medical fitness staffing
“One thing that I'll say about medical fitness centers that I've always believed for the staffing is, if you're using the medical fitness model and you're employing folks with degrees, that really, they went to school for this, and they want to make a career out of this, this is their profession. Then you're getting sometimes a little bit higher quality. And those people are, are usually, they're more apt to stay a little longer term. So the turnover is probably a little bit less than your traditional commercial fitness centers.”
[17:25] Collaborative care team
“In my career, it was always very important to bring together the care team. And so whether you're talking about those within the same facility, so oftentimes for me that was physical therapists, that was diabetes educators, sometimes nurses and others, even physicians that were within the same physical structure, but then even throughout the entire healthcare system…”
[22:10] MFA certification
“It helped financial performance for my facility. And I think that ultimately boiled down to the differentiation that the MFA’s facility certification created for us. And so that differentiation, we were able to show that and talk to people, physicians, other health care providers who were referring to us, just the general public even. I think it really created a level of trust and that understanding of what we do and how we can help.”
[26:32] Medical fitness opportunities
“I think the opportunity then lies in being able to be that resource for those people and so differentiating and saying, we have these programs, and we have these, these, these staff that are going to create these outcomes that are going to be really beneficial.”
