CFOs must be strategic business partners to both clinical and operational leadership.
When Lankford Wade, the CFO for Summit Medical Group and CityMD, joined the healthcare provider in early March of 2020, he knew his job wouldn’t be easy—the merger between the two providers had only been finalized seven months prior—but what happened over the next few weeks would fundamentally change the business, the healthcare system, and the role CFOs play within the business of medicine.
Wade recently connected with HealthLeaders to discuss how he led the organization’s financial operations since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, how the organization has grown, and how he’s seen the CFO role evolve over the course of his career.
HealthLeaders: What was the pandemic’s financial impact on Summit/CityMD?
Lankford Wade: When I joined the organization on March 2, 2020, little did I know that the business would be fundamentally transformed just a few weeks after I joined. Initially, we faced a lot of the same financial challenges that most providers across the country faced. It happened earlier for us here in the northeast than for a lot of others in the country. We saw visits drop off dramatically thanks to stay-at-home orders, and like everyone else, we ended up furloughing a significant portion of our employee base.
But, with the advent of COVID testing, visits at our urgent care locations took off dramatically by mid-April to early May. We had most political leaders in the region directing patients to CityMD because the emergency rooms were overwhelmed with positive COVID patients. And so, we became one of the primary testing locations for the greater New York, New Jersey areas over the course of two years. We had something in the magnitude of around 10 million patients visiting us for COVID-related testing services. So, the business took off from that perspective.
As we provided those essential services, it allowed us to bring back our staff and allowed us to continue to support our multi-specialty practice. It ultimately allowed us to continue to invest in and grow our business. We were able to grow our provider count very significantly; we were able to invest in real estate to support that growth. And so now we have somewhere in the magnitude of around 2,700 providers. So, we’ve grown very significantly over the course of the last three years.
HL: Why was Summit/CityMD able to grow during this period, while other providers struggled?
Wade: We had different experiences. Those providers were incredibly supportive of patients who were very, very sick during the pandemic. I think because they were so inundated with these incredibly sick patients, we became an alternative because patients still needed [non-COVID-related] care that historically they might have gotten from one of those locations. Those patients ended up coming to our outpatient service providers, multi-specialty care providers, or urgent care locations.
HL: What lessons do you think healthcare providers should take away from this?
Wade: I think the pandemic accelerated the increasing push toward outpatient care. Now patients are seeking solutions from providers like us, that can do it in an office-based setting or can do it in a community-based healthcare setting as we have with our urgent care locations. Patients want the convenience of being seen by their provider when and how they want. Increasingly, we’re seeing health systems follow that lead as a lot of them have been acquiring physicians’ groups so they can offer that outpatient care. They're also forging some pretty interesting ad partnerships, whether it's with urgent care operators, or starting their own urgent care locations to be able to have that community-based healthcare setting to meet patients’ needs when they don't want to go into the hospital.
HL: How have you seen the role of the healthcare CFO evolve over the course of your career?
Wade: It's evolved from being the scorekeeper-in-chief to someone that is now a strategic business partner to both clinical and operational leadership. Don’t get me wrong, you still need to keep score and make sure results are reported appropriately. But the best CFOs are those who can define divine the right insights from those financial results and help steer the business into the future. CFOs need to be a part of the team that takes those results and uses them to create a better tomorrow. That might look like taking operational ownership of various parts of the business, or just having a team that can really engage with that leader to actually push the business to the right place and make the right strategic decisions.
Amanda Schiavo is the Finance Editor for HealthLeaders.