Healthcare Efficiency
Stat!

By Gretchen Cain

“Anyone going into business should have a great passion to achieve their goals. It should be about helping others and making a difference. It can’t be about the money. If money is all you’re striving for, you’ll never be happy. There always will be a void that needs to be filled.” – Greg Firestone

Greg Firestone would like to say the United States is “leading edge” in healthcare delivery. “With a lot of improvement, it could happen in the future, but that’s definitely not the case today. It is sadly lacking,” said Firestone, CEO of NCI, a training and consulting firm, billed as the leading authority on healthcare chain innovation. Firestone’s passion for the last 20 years has been to fix the delivery systems in the healthcare industry in order to increase their efficiency.

Firestone’s great passion is also his greatest frustration: A case in point, said Firestone, is a trip to the Emergency Room. “Someone ends up there as the result of an injury and needs an MRI. Instead of a 15-minute visit, the person is there for 2 hours. It shouldn’t be that way!”

Firestone said the whole system lacks collaboration. A major obstacle is that US hospitals, of which about 85% are nonprofit, operate in a socialistic environment, but have to compete in a capitalistic market. “It is very frustrating for all concerned!” said Firestone. “Add to the fact that insurance companies, drug manufacturers and hospital equipment manufacturers make a lot of money. They are all about protecting their own interests.”

While many patients have been overcharged for procedures and prescriptions, Firestone believes HMOs were the worst thing that ever happened to the American healthcare system. “Their implementation went to the other extreme and had everybody believing that everything cost $10 (the co-payment). This clearly is not the case,” he stated.

Believing that education and collaboration among healthcare stakeholders is the key to making improvements, Firestone has recently written a book for medical products and pharmaceutical manufacturers, entitled Swimming With the Supertankers. The book is a tutorial to assist the manufacturers in establishing relationships with hospital purchase decision-makers.

Firestone's principles apply to a person's business, as well as individual, philosophy. Anyone who truly wants to be "in the swim" should:

• Put others first, focusing on understanding their needs because human resources are the most important company asset

• Make a conscious effort to collaborate with each stakeholder and adapt to others' successful styles

• Always have his mind-set on making improvements; continuous gradual momentum is preferred to radical change

• 24/7 be thinking of better ways to organize so that his employees work better for him

Firestone said in the future he will write another book that is more specific, more solution-oriented, on healthcare reform that the layperson can understand. "They won't have to listen to their favorite politicians, who aren't even close to understanding the issues, trying to explain them," he said.

NCI has headquarters at 13046 on Racetrack Rd. in Tampa, but relies heavily on its website, www.NCIhome.com, to disseminate information. Reading materials, such as a free newsletter, “Care Chain Insights,” are available. Other educational channels are seminars and expos. Through another company division, Integrated Delivery Networks (IDN), Firestone has created an interesting twist on arranging expos. "The hospital administrators man the booths, while vendors for hospital machines, equipment, etc. walk the floor," he said.

Firestone said his late father was his first mentor. "He was a man of great integrity and strong morals, who had a very good work ethic," he recalls. He also was very supportive. "I remember when I was a teenager telling Dad that I wanted to make a difference. I didn’t want to work for someone else, because it would limit the directions I wanted to take,” said Firestone. "Dad worked for UpJohn Pharmaceuticals, but that's not why I went into healthcare," said Firestone. "I didn't just want to follow in my Dad's footsteps. The driver was that I really wanted to make a difference in people's lives by changing the quality of the products," he said.

Firestone found a job selling products used in surgical suites, and living in Detroit, where everything revolved around the automotive industry (more, better, faster), Firestone felt the same high standards for quality in automotive manufacturing could be applied to the healthcare industry. In the early 1980's, Firestone went to Japan where he learned about Kaizen, a corporate manufacturing management style that fosters orderly, continuous improvement. He was determined to embrace the Kaizen methods in his career.

“At the time every hospital in the country was making money, so most healthcare-related companies weren’t particularly interested in making improvements,” said Firestone. His employer, Rick Neuhauser, who owned Richard Alan Medical, was an exception and recognized the benefits of the Kaizen business model:

• Everyone in an organization works together to make improvements without large capital investments.

• The focus is using teamwork to eliminate waste in all systems and processes of the workplace based on statistical/quantitative evaluation.

While working for Richard Alan Medical, Firestone learned about NCI, a consulting firm, which he would later purchase. "NCI was hired to help medical manufacturers understand how to increase sales. They were big on education and had meetings to get buyers and sellers together,” said Firestone. NCI matched Firestone’s style, and in 1995 company owner Robert Osdyke talked Firestone into moving to southern California to grow the educational side of the business. Two years later, Firestone’s passion drove him to become the new owner and set up shop in Tampa.

Over the past 20 years, Firestone has learned many things through the school of hard knocks; if he knew then what he knows now, he would have been more proficient in finance. “Most successful entrepreneurs have a vision or strategy. They also have pitfalls, and it is important to know what they are,” said Firestone. In addition to being educated to forecast financial situations, or perhaps hiring a financial advisor early on, Firestone said he should have hired someone to do the hiring. “In my quest to help others, I sometimes hired people who weren’t really qualified. It hurt business,” he said.

Above all, the message that keeps coming back to him is, said Firestone, “Anyone going into business should have a great passion to achieve their goals. It should be about helping others and making a difference. It can’t be about the money. If money is all you’re striving for, you’ll never be happy, and there always will be a void that needs to be filled.”

Along with this philosophy, Firestone emphasizes the need to keep one’s life in balance. Firestone's formula for healthy living is prioritizing his time, with faith and family at the top of the list, followed by career and outside interests, such as a good game of golf - he has a seven handicap. This wasn't always the case, but at 49, Firestone's personal goals include being an active part of his Grace Family Christian Church ministry and his family: wife Nancy, son Alec, 13, and daughter Nikki, 10.

"I have arranged my schedule so that I travel less on the job than I used to. I don't want to miss my children growing up and want to be as supportive of my wife as she is of me," said Firestone. He enjoys coaching the children's sports teams, including their school's (Cambridge) golf team.

Being very driven and working hard for more than 20 years in the healthcare supply chain industry has its rewards. Firestone has more freedom these days to do the part of his job he finds the most fulfilling, the educating process. "I want to do more with education through books and producing business models to be introduced in news magazines and at events. There is also a whole world of online learning to be pursued," said Firestone. "Healthcare is very limited in online learning, especially regarding the care-providers' side of the business process," he said.

"Do I have any plans to retire or exit the business world? Heck no! That's a death sentence," said Firestone, "I always will be dabbling in healthcare."

It appears that Firestone has adapted Kaizen to his own lifestyle. Firestone said he spends about 80% of his time focused on healthcare and 20% on his church's ministry. "I can see those percentages reversing themselves in the future. I can see myself working more as a missionary, right here in America. I am a huge proponent of improvement, and that includes orderly, continuous self-improvement," he said.

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