Value Partnership Engagement ManagersDriving opportunities for progress and the advancement of healthcare

The scope of the performance innovation projects that we’ve done with MUSC is just mind-boggling—and they are returning real value back to the health system. In radiology, for example, we’ve optimized workflows to shorten exam and patient wait times.

Another company may default to selling a new scanner. Instead, we assessed their workflows, ran digital twins and workflow simulations to identify bottlenecks, and then worked with MUSC to solve them. We're in the trenches with MUSC, working hand-in-hand with them to address workflow issues, optimize operations, and deliver real results. In the OR space, we’re working with LeanTaaS to improve block scheduling and free up more surgery space. Within the initial 90 days, more than 650 block hours were freed up from orthopedics alone, with an average lead time of 72 days for block-time release. 

In PET-CT, they have been able to significantly decrease the wait time for appointments, exam times, and same-day cancellations. As a result, MUSC has performed about 5,000 additional PET-CT scans over the last four years compared with the baseline rate, meaning better access for the community and an improved patient experience.

My background is in politics—I was Deputy Chief of Staff for a senator and then I was a presidential appointee and served as Chief of Staff for the Deputy Secretary of Energy. I worked on drafting the Affordable Care Act. My experience has been invaluable in helping to build relationships, with an appreciation for what matters most to both sides. I’m able to navigate Siemens Healthineers and MUSC in mutually beneficial ways—finding common ground and helping to turn challenges into opportunities. 

The most interesting aspect of the Engagement Manager role is that I’m fully embedded with my customer, Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Our strategic affiliation includes a comprehensive technology roadmap, service collaborations, education, workforce development programs, and so much more. I work closely with my MUSC counterparts to ensure that all these initiatives align with their strategy and vision for the future of healthcare at MUSC.

Before Siemens Healthineers, I worked in MUSC’s Office of External Affairs, managing their strategic partnerships. Joining Siemens Healthineers as an Engagement Manager was a great opportunity to continue building on the work I was doing at MUSC, with a unique “customer” perspective on how our organizations can best work together to drive positive change.

I think our Value Partnership with MUSC is one of the most exciting ones we have. Not only was it our first Value Partnership in the U.S., but it spans much of our product and services portfolio—from technology to performance optimization to workforce education and training to research and collaborations. Every day, I focus on delivering on our current initiatives and promises, while keeping an eye on the future and how we can continue leveraging our joint capabilities to grow the Value Partnership in support of MUSC’s tripartite mission of education, research, and patient care. I’m fortunate to work with many stakeholders at MUSC—from executive management to physician leadership to research teams and so many others.

First, regardless of the partnership goals, it's imperative that both parties share the same values—and that’s what has made this Value Partnership so successful. It's not a typical vendor-customer relationship. It’s a true partnership with open communication and complete transparency.  And, most importantly, it’s built on a foundation of trust from the top down—with both sides having skin in the game and challenging each other to approach healthcare challenges differently. I think Dr. Cole, MUSC President, summarized it best when he said that in order for this partnership to be successful, both sides had to feel “uncomfortable” and challenge conventional wisdom.

All Value Partnerships have a governance structure to maintain executive-level engagement, and to support project champions. These regular check-ins ensure that all initiatives are driving toward the partnership goals and help identify other areas where the partnership can continue to grow and evolve. A successful Value Partnership takes a village. It’s important that I help create a culture of collaboration and manage expectations to keep everyone moving in the same direction.

Before my tenure at MUSC, I had been working in politics. The role in External Affairs was appealing because it enabled me to look at healthcare differently and how we can better serve our patients and deliver better outcomes. Changing healthcare, for example from a fee-for-service to a value-based care model is something we can address together.

That’s what really motivates me—to explore how Siemens Healthineers and MUSC can work together to create the best outcome for patients. For example, how do we look at their wellness from a holistic perspective and give them the tools that they need to have the best possible health outcomes? Siemens Healthineers is on the cutting edge of technology, including AI. Being on the frontline of how we can leverage these innovations to improve patient care is important to me.

From a healthcare access perspective, one of the biggest projects and perhaps the best example of us working together was our joint mobile mammography event. Siemens Healthineers brought a mobile mammography truck to rural South Carolina, where there are high rates of cancer and limited access to preventative medicine, to provide screenings to uninsured or underinsured women.

The event was a resounding success. Over two weeks, we screened about 160 women; about half of which had never had a mammography or any type of screening. We caught some incidents of findings that needed to be followed up on. We also used this opportunity to invite about 150 schoolchildren from surrounding areas to tour the truck, talk to our technologist, and open their eyes to potential careers in healthcare. Overall, it was a feel-good event, a great source of pride, and a great example of the benefit of Siemens Healthineers coming together with our partner.

The scope of the performance innovation projects that we’ve done with MUSC is just mind-boggling—and they are returning real value back to the health system. In radiology, for example, we’ve optimized workflows to shorten exam and patient wait times.

Another company may default to selling a new scanner. Instead, we assessed their workflows, ran digital twins and workflow simulations to identify bottlenecks, and then worked with MUSC to solve them. We're in the trenches with MUSC, working hand-in-hand with them to address workflow issues, optimize operations, and deliver real results. In the OR space, we’re working with LeanTaaS to improve block scheduling and free up more surgery space. Within the initial 90 days, more than 650 block hours were freed up from orthopedics alone, with an average lead time of 72 days for block-time release. 

In PET-CT, they have been able to significantly decrease the wait time for appointments, exam times, and same-day cancellations. As a result, MUSC has performed about 5,000 additional PET-CT scans over the last four years compared with the baseline rate, meaning better access for the community and an improved patient experience.

Being an academic medical center, MU is committed to driving research forward. In the first few years of our partnership, The NextGen Precision Health building was built and opened to serve as a research hub for chronic conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. It’s equipped with some of the latest medical technologies, including one of the only 7T MRI scanners in the Midwest.

We also co-developed one of the first online bioengineering programs to help stimulate and develop the pipeline of future service engineers and helped secure $2.6 million in state funding to bring it to fruition. Now we’re beginning to engage with the College of Engineering on their capstone projects, which take a real-life issue and ask the students to problem solve, ideate, and even develop new products to address it.

In my opinion, it’s the diversity of our backgrounds and collective experience. We have experts from the clinical side as well as from hospital operations like myself. This vast experience allows us to leverage each other's strengths and bring broad perspectives to proposing and developing innovative solutions for our customers. One of the things I love about working for Siemens Healthineers is our focus on innovation. We’re always finding new ways to approach challenges and solve problems. The culture across the entire company is collaborative and solution driven.

I was very happy working at MU Health Care; I had been there 17 years and wasn’t looking to leave. But when the health system CEO approached me about this role, I was immediately intrigued. It was an opportunity to learn a whole new side of the business while still supporting and working with the team there.

It’s quite common for Siemens Healthineers and our Value Partnership customer to recruit for the engagement manager position from the customer side. From the beginning, it plants seeds of trust by positioning someone with knowledge of the customer’s internal structure, procedures, and executive-level familiarity as an advocate for that customer inside of Siemens Healthineers, a highly matrixed, global organization.

Our Value Partnerships are very complex and layered with several projects underway simultaneously. I am the connector for MU Health Care, so I manage both the pace and the demand of each project across radiology, lab, inpatient, campus departments, and other service lines. Often, I’m leading collaborative work to address the challenges MU Health Care is facing in areas like workforce or operations and workflow. Every day is different and includes so many aspects in support of the Value Partnership—from day-to-day basics like equipment upkeep to more strategic aspects like managing contract deliverables.

When we kick off a Value Partnership, the focus is on building a foundation of trust and alignment on key priorities. It’s crucial that everyone understands the nature of the relationship – that it is collaborative; that we share values and a vision; that your success is our success. And that’s not just the leadership teams; we need to educate many stakeholders across the customer organization, especially those on the front lines of patient care who are really experiencing the big challenges. It’s a unique type of relationship in any business model, but especially for healthcare and MedTech. Our dynamic far exceeds that of a typical vendor-customer transactional relationship. In the first year, we establish the structure of the partnership and launch projects. This includes the managing committees, workflow processes and setting KPIs.

After that, the fun really begins. The opportunities for innovation start to present themselves, and we get to explore how far outside the box we can get with our approaches. The University of Missouri/MU Health Care Value Partnership is now in year five and has already achieved several of the goals initially set. Now we’re branching out. We will be the first partnership with a lab going live, starting with equipment. I’m excited to see how we can leverage the lab project to address education and workforce or performance improvement in new ways.

That was a very personal decision for me. My family—specifically my grandmother—had some health problems when I was young, and I witnessed how challenging it was for her to navigate the healthcare system. It was frustrating to see how much of a struggle it was for her to manage her health and wellness. I knew from a young age that I wanted to work in this industry just to make some kind of impact that improved the process and outcomes for other families going through the same thing. 

I truly think that any and all success is going to be propelled by really understanding the Value Partnership, the various areas of expertise that are available through the collective teams, and what levers to pull to amplify everyone’s efforts. When I assumed this role, I immediately went on a roadshow of meeting with different stakeholders at the university and health system to orient them to what the partnership was. We integrated physicians from several clinical specialties into the partnership structure, which made a huge difference in engagement in both the development and execution of some of our most successful projects.

The collaboration with the Midwest Transplant Center in Kansas City is a favorite of mine. It was the first time Siemens Healthineers connected a health system with an out-of-network organization using syngo Virtual Cockpit. Typically, utilization of this tool for remote scanning support is within a health system, but connecting MU Health Care with another facility outside their system has improved the workflow for the transplant center. They no longer need to page and wait for a tech to perform a scan on a patient. Now they’re able to contact MU Health Care and have the scan done remotely. It’s having a positive and immediate impact on the timeline of harvesting and transplanting potentially lifesaving organs.

Being an academic medical center, MU is committed to driving research forward. In the first few years of our partnership, The NextGen Precision Health building was built and opened to serve as a research hub for chronic conditions like cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases. It’s equipped with some of the latest medical technologies, including one of the only 7T MRI scanners in the Midwest.

We also co-developed one of the first online bioengineering programs to help stimulate and develop the pipeline of future service engineers and helped secure $2.6 million in state funding to bring it to fruition. Now we’re beginning to engage with the College of Engineering on their capstone projects, which take a real-life issue and ask the students to problem solve, ideate, and even develop new products to address it.