Category: Media Mentions

Partners HealthCare moved quickly to appoint Dr. Anne Klibanski as interim CEO after the resignation of Dr. David Torchiana. David Williams was quoted in the Boston Globe story about it:

The Boston health care consultant David Williams said naming an interim CEO gives the board some time to conduct a thorough search for a permanent replacement.

“They have a history of taking a senior physician and making them CEO of Partners,’’ said Williams, the president of Health Business Group. “Now I think they’re not sure if they want to do that again or if they want to look more broadly for, say, a business person.”

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Boston Business Journal quoted David Williams about the sudden departure of Partners HealthCare CEO, Dr. David Tochiana:

“(Torchiana) tried to rationalize the organization and make Partners into a real company with more centralized decision-making, and make Partners itself mean something other than just the General and the Brigham,” Williams said. “It’s not surprising that he wasn’t successful. I don’t know if the next person will be successful either, if they will take the same route.”

Williams said whoever replaces Torchiana will have to be politically savvy to navigate those waters, but added, “even that might not be enough.” One option, he said, would be a restructuring of the organization into a group of separate hospitals that just share administrative resources.

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Partners HealthCare is opening new outpatient clinics. Could the company be taking advantage of the BI-Lahey merger to press its own advantage. David told the Globe (Partners HealthCare plans new outpatient clinics)

“Partners is expanding in the most lucrative lines of business that they can — putting outpatient facilities in high-income suburbs,” said David E. Williams, president of the Boston consulting firm Health Business Group. “This is a very good way to make money. Previously, Partners might have faced more scrutiny for making these kinds of expansions, but now with BI-Lahey, they won’t get as much pushback as they might have gotten before.”

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Reliant –formerly Fallon Clinic– has 2600 employees and is almost 90 years old. Optum is purchasing them. Here’s what David Williams told the  Worcester Telegram:

“A lot of these systems are under strain,” said David E. Williams, president of the Health Business Group, a Boston-based consulting firm. “I think what you’re seeing at the same time is there are some national organizations, health plans and companies like Optum that do have a lot of capital and that have diversified businesses that are looking for growth opportunities.”

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The Boston Business Journal interviewed David Williams about the merger of Beth Israel Deaconess, Lahey Health, New England Baptist, Mount Auburn and Anna Jacques, specifically a letter written by Attorney General Maura Healey.

Health care expert David Williams said the attorney general’s early involvement could speed up the overall review, but may also mean that conditions imposed will have more teeth.

“Whenever the AG is involved it gets pretty legalistic and sometimes confrontational in a way that working with the HPC would not necessarily do,” said Williams, who works with Boston consulting firm Health Business Group. “I think what it means is that any terms and conditions that are agreed to as part of the merger are more likely to be enforceable if the AG is involved because they have more tools at their disposal.”

He said the attorney general’s early involvement reflected the concerns raised by competing hospital Tufts Medical Center and a community group that has ties to Steward Health Care.

“Presumably, the AG has heard from these organizations and decided to take their concerns seriously,” he said. “It’s likely she is trying to influence the terms of the merger in order to mitigate these issues.”

I also told the reporter that there were “eerie” similarities in the arguments made by this group and what Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s said way back when they formed Partners, e.g., that healthcare costs would drop as a result.

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