When Dr. Paul Klotman took over in 2010 as president and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine, the school had been losing up to $70 million a year — for the previous five to six years. The financial books were not a pretty sight.
A previous conflict had developed between Baylor and one of its hospital affiliates and a different pathway was chosen for the two. Unfortunately, it cost Baylor about $40 million a year.
“It was not huge in size as part of a $1.5 billion revenue stream, but it was a fair amount,” Klotman says. “We had a new financial challenge that presented itself, and because we were in the process of building some facilities right before the housing market burst, we had a significant problem with debt service and negative cash flows.”
But Klotman was ready to jump into the challenge for which he had been hired. He was no stranger to turnarounds. He had been involved in a major financial about-face at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York as the chair of the Samuel Bronfman Department of Medicine. He moved the department to a top-tier academic program by expanding the faculty practice, increasing basic and clinical research revenue and focusing on the educational mission.
“I felt very comfortable in what had to be done,” Klotman says. “Taking the job was actually easy, because Baylor is such a fabulous organization and all the fundamentals were extremely solid. It was just an issue of dealing with the budgetary deficit and turning around the institution’s financial operational deficit.
“I had been at a Veterans Administration hospital, I was a federal employee at the National Institutes of Health for years as a scientist, I was at Duke University in the private sector, and I was at Mount Sinai in a very competitive clinical world, so it helped to have those experiences. I have to say as difficult as the situation was, there was very little that surprised me.”
Klotman set out on a path to initiate new processes to let the faculty do its own thing by following some traditional business principles — such as managing its budgets.
“It’s not rocket science, but it is surprising that it is not that common in academic organizations to worry about your margin, your expenses and making sure you’re maximizing your revenue,” he says.
“When I first came in, we focused on doing just that. We created zero-based budgeting that was all mission-based. In a very short time, within two years, we went from a $70 million deficit on an annual basis to where we are basically cash positive.”
It wasn’t just a matter of spreadsheets and figures. A change in culture from varying processes to one with solid business principles is an unsettling process, and is indeed sometimes not undertaken because it is so disquieting.
“I think one of the hardest parts is gaining leadership’s support of converting to the business sentiments,” Klotman says. “All of the leaders were supportive. All of them were willing to give it a shot. We would never have turned it around as quickly as we had if it weren’t for the leadership of the chairs, the senate directors and the faculty.”
Here are Klotman’s keys to stem the bleeding at Baylor and engage the leadership in new types of financial management.
Face the situation
One of the things that a crisis does is that it gets every employee’s attention. Once the stark news is delivered, the workforce should be able to know and understand the financial realities.
“The crisis allowed us to change the budget process at a time when it otherwise might not have been very accepted,” Klotman says.
Unfortunately, keeping the status quo is not an option. There is going to be change.
“When the boat has to go in one direction you’ve got to have everyone rowing in the same direction,” he says.
Some organizations may call in a consulting firm to dissect the financial and management processes and it can be beneficial. In other cases, the analysis by an outside group is just that – an outsider’s look at internal problems.
“Before I arrived, a consulting firm had been there, and I would say the faculty and leadership were probably not as responsive to the consultancy, because the consultants didn’t have any of the same experiences,” Klotman says. “You could see the cultural rift. When I first arrived and saw the interaction with the consulting group, which actually did a fine job in getting us in the right direction, you could see the disconnect between faculty and leadership and the consulting group, because they did not speak the same language.”
The most important action to take as the first step in the cultural makeover is to be transparent in all the processes.
“Show the data,” Klotman says. “If you show them the information, there are not a lot of arguments that you can have about your situation. If you’re not transparent about it, it’s very easy to blame everybody else. But if you just are transparent with the data, it’s simple to establish accountability.”
But transparency is something that is very hard to get if your data is disorganized. If it lacks uniformity and completeness, it is crucial to get the data in order.
“Getting transparency may be complicated, because there may be a lot of dollar movement from one bucket to another bucket,” he says. “Part of it is where you assign expenses to the right unit — making sure that you are allocating expenses correctly, and that you are attributing revenues to the right sources. Otherwise you can’t make good decisions.
“Part of our first year was cleaning up that kind of data — and we still have issues with it today.”
The better and more accurate the data is, the better you will be able to manage your financial situation. It may take a year to get the data to the point so that you can provide accurate information about your mission – so accurate utilization of data is needed about billing and collections, efficiency processes, revenue, expenses, space density, etc.
“There are hundreds of metrics that you can do,” Klotman says. “Once we collated all the data, we were able to create a report that all the leaders get. Have your financial people help them interpret that, then get together quarterly and review it together. It’s something we call Numbers Day.”
Holding a Numbers Day is an effective way to review your mission-based budget. Any department or division of a business should earn its operational budget based on its performance the year before.
“Everybody gets to see all the data, including where everyone sits financially so it’s completely transparent,” Klotman says. “If there are disagreements about the data, discuss it. It’s an iterative process so they can ask questions about it; you can make sure that it’s accurate.
“But the main thing is that it provides the leaders with management tools so they can then break it down by department or mission base, look at their own business unit and see how they can improve it.”
This is an obvious key factor in driving improvements. If you measure processes and performances and show your managers, they will have the tool to improve matters.
“If you do it in a way that everyone sees the data, then it is hard to really argue with,” Klotman says. “That’s why it’s an iterative process. You need to have that public forum where people can discuss it.
“It also helps to unify everyone with the understanding, ‘Well, these are the things that are important to executive leadership because they are measuring them.’”
Most of the leaders should be happy to have the data. Initially there may be some arguing about its validity. Ultimately, it provides them with management tools — and it also helps C-level executives understand who can manage, because some of them use the data very well and improve their operations and others just won’t get it.
“You can see that in the long run you may have a certain number of leaders that probably have to be replaced,” Klotman says. “The point is that you are giving them tools to use. There should be no one who really objects to the data.”
Communicate and get feedback
You’ve heard it over and over. Communication is critical for success in any organization and even more so in large ones. The most effective approach lies in the old adages that one size does not fit all and the more, the better.
“You will need to focus on your internal communications to reach more people,” Klotman said. “We had certain levels of publications before, but we created a whole new set of ways to communicate internally from hard copy to Web-based publications.”
He also used town hall meetings where he regularly met with groups and held small staff meetings.
Despite all those things, you still may have issues with communication because each form of communication only hits a certain population.
“We will have a town hall meeting where we are thrilled because 200 people show up,” he says. “Well, we have 7,500 employees. So we have to find multiple ways to constantly say the same thing and get the message out. Of all the things that you will face, I think communication remains one of the biggest challenges.”
In addition to finding other communication routes, you can create feedback committees to represent departments or specialties.
“You can do this through input committees; we have those that represent clinicians, researchers and even students,” Klotman says. “We combine in a council so we can get feedback from the various constituencies and that helps inform us of the kinds of communications that we have to give back to them.
“One of the great things that our director of communications has been able to get members to do is to come with both positive and negative statements about the institution so it never turns into just a complaining session.”
This is extremely helpful in figuring out the things your organization does well in addition to the things you do poorly.
“You’ll get both the benefit of knowing you should continue to do certain things because they are working, and you’ll learn what things aren’t working well so you can begin to focus on them,” Klotman says.
“But you can’t fix things unless you get feedback about the problems, and if you look at the most highly functioning organizations, they almost always have a very robust feedback system where line employees, people on the ground and the rest, can send feedback to you about problems.
“We’ve received individual complaints from staff across our organization where I would say that 95 percent of the time we immediately fixed the problem,” he says. “We’ve had things like the glare in a window where all we had to do was install a shade.
“These are the things that if you create a culture where people feel that they can give you feedback, then you can actually improve things much more dramatically than if everyone was waiting around for a CEO to fix a broken lock.
“You want people to actually give you legitimate feedback about things that are broken and the processes that don’t work, as long as they understand there are some things that you can fix and some things you really can’t.”
Your employees should understand there is no risk in reporting a problem, that there’s no punishment for saying something is broken.
“My favorite example is the aircraft carriers of the world that function with 19-year-olds in the most dangerous, high-risk places where they have almost no accidents,” Klotman says. “We are in health care and education, and every day, we screw up about 100 things, so we ought to be able to do something better. Part of the difference is the culture in the aircraft carrier: everybody reports a problem.”
Give merit rewards
While a new management system and better ways to communicate will go far in helping an organization begin to turn around, a rewards system will help it even further. With the new data available, metrics can be established to ensure that goals are being met.
“You take your leaders and based on their ability to manage their margin and the mission values that you have, allow them to pick a few metrics that they think are important in their own particular area so they can earn bonuses based on that,” Klotman says.
You can implement this as far down the labor ladder as you want, the lower, the better.
“Once again, this is to get them in line with upper management,” he says. “That way it’s a self-correcting ship. Middle management is really important in great companies, and you need middle management to be active managers to make sure they are going in the direction that you want.”
Give your employees 10 things that you want to have happen, and say, “You pick your four, and we will measure you on those.”
“There is one collective goal: The organization as a whole has to be on a positive margin for you to bonus the leaders,” Klotman says. “People earn their budgets and they earn their salaries. If you’re on margin, and if the departments are on margin, then there will be bonuses available based on producing results that are a combination of ones the CEO picked and ones they have picked.
“As I mentioned before, one of the keys is having things that you can measure. Make sure that you create metrics that can show whether you are getting better or you aren’t.”
How to reach: Baylor College of Medicine, (713) 798-4951 or www.bcm.edu
Paul Klotman, M.D.
President and CEO
Baylor College of Medicine
The Klotman file
Born: I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. My father’s from Cleveland. My mother was born and raised in Galveston, Texas. I went to Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio.
Education: University of Michigan. I studied zoology and entomology. I went to medical school at Indiana University. You may wonder, I followed my parents — and got in-state tuition wherever I went. I also trained at Duke University Medical Center.
What was your first job?
I was folding pants as a 16-year-old in downtown Detroit. It was a very popular African-American suit store. I also was a day camp counselor there during the 1960s’ race riots. I was right there, and it was actually a wonderful experience. They never touched my car — I was providing a service to the community.
Who do you admire most in the business world?
There are a couple of people that I think are really interesting. One is Tom Kaplan, who I met in New York and who founded Panthera Corp. He’s probably the biggest leader in the gold movement. I’ve gotten to know him personally, and he is just a really remarkable person. The other person that I admire greatly is Norbert Bischofberger, who is the number two person at Gilead Sciences Inc. Of all the people I’ve met, he’s one of the few people who just cares about understanding everything he can to make a difference to help people.
What was the best business advice you’ve ever received?
I know it seems silly but the importance of cash. The CFO at my old organization was really, really talented, and had a huge role in turning around the old hospital focusing on the details of your cash position.
What is your definition of business success?
I view my role in every place I’ve been as a steward of the program, and I think your success is if you leave the place better than when you came. That’s not a measure of personal success; it’s not a measure for a for-profit company but for a not-for-profit organization. I think there is a level of stewardship that is greater than in other areas, and I think that your responsibility is to improve the institution.
