24-Jan-2017 Source: Vanderbilt LifeFlight
Exponential growth over the last several years is fueling a management restructuring for Vanderbilt LifeFlight, which will increase the program’s director or management positions to better handle current and future growth.
“The same management structure has been in place for several years and has not kept up with the growth that we’ve experienced over the last 10 years,” said Stephan Russ, M.D., associate professor of Emergency Medicine at VUMC and associate chief of staff for Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital. “Lifeflight is nationally known for its attention to detail both from an aviation and medical care perspective, and we want to continue to have a management structure that supports that degree of focus on safety and outcomes.”
Jeanne Yeatman, RN, BSN, MBA, EMT, associate nursing officer, Emergency Services, approached the Owen Graduate School of Management for their help in guiding the restructure and to make recommendations. She said two students undertook the extensive project with the aim of no manager having an excessive span of responsibilities.
Matt Sternberg and Ashley Costello were recruited to help research the reorganization project. Sternberg is a fellow with the Center for Health Care Innovation and a former health care consultant with Deloitte. Costello is an emergency and critical care nurse, and both are 2018 MBA candidates with the Owen Graduate School of Management. Both spent countless hours researching other critical care transport programs and interviewed current staff and managers to help develop the framework for the new structure.
“We are very fortunate to have the exceptional resources that the Owen Graduate School provided,” Yeatman said. “Matt and Ashely have worked very hard with our executive leadership team and their research and final recommendations will lay the groundwork for our future.”
“LifeFlight is growing quickly and, like any rapidly growing business, is experiencing unidentified growing pains,” Sternberg said. “Our team looked at the current organizational structure and recommended how the optimal go forward structure would look. In undertaking this endeavor, we talked with as many team members at LifeFlight as possible in addition to conducting academic research. We interviewed over 20 individuals and uncovered incredible insights. The first and most important of these was the commitment of the LifeFlight team, both to each other on an individual level and to the greater goals of LifeFlight in general.”
“Aside from the immediate organizational recommendations, the biggest win from this project was uncovering the many ideas that the team has about ways to grow LifeFlight moving forward,” Costello added. “Our team is excited to continue the partnership between LifeFlight and the Owen Graduate School of Management in order to explore these other ideas and continue LifeFlight’s success in the future.”
The recommendation made by the team was an attempt to balance span of control with decentralized decision-making.
“Backed by what we heard from the interviews as well as the academic research, we wanted to push down decision-making rights within the organization to empower individuals to make better tactical decisions while freeing up leadership time to focus on the strategy moving forward,” Sternberg said.
The result:
A national search will be conducted for the positions with the hope of having them filled and the new management structure in place within 60 days.
“We are a nationally recognized and highly respected program and we are looking for leaders that can work within the institution vision and provide exceptional employee support as we continue to grow and look to the future,” Russ said. “We are very grateful for the hard work that Matt and Ashley put into this project. Our restructuring comes at a crucial time in health care, and our staff needs the very best support and management that we can provide.”