The sponge or needle left inside a patient. The operation performed on the wrong limb or organ. Surgeons call them 鈥渘ever鈥� events, because they should never happen, but in hectic hospitals, such incidents happen quite often. And often, they are deadly. More than 250,000 Americans die of preventable medical errors each year, making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S., according to a .
The mission of one medical startup is to change that. And in order to grow its client base, the company tapped the insights of a team of M.B.A. students at the Carroll School.
Gerald Healy 鈥�63 is a managing partner at . He鈥檚 also surgeon-in-chief emeritus at Children鈥檚 Hospital in Boston and a professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose, and throat) at Harvard Medical School.
鈥淚n health care, as in other lines of work, if people don鈥檛 communicate properly, if they don鈥檛 work as a team, problems will occur,鈥� Healy said in an initial interview last fall. Moreover, he said, a growing emphasis on quantity (of surgeries) over quality (of care) in many hospitals, compounded by piles of insurance and government red tape, can cloud the communication channels and cause fatal mistakes.
Healy co-founded OR Dx + Rx in 2016 to improve safety in the perioperative process鈥斺�渢he operating room and also the space around it, the pre-operative area and the recovery room,鈥� he explained.
The startup is uncommon in its focus on safety. 鈥淢any consulting groups tell hospitals, 鈥榃e鈥檙e about operating room improvement,鈥欌�� Healy said, 鈥渂ut really they鈥檙e about helping you figure out how to save money, how to put more cases through the operating room in the course of a day, how to shorten turnaround time between patients.
鈥淏ut patients are not Toyotas,鈥� Healy added. 鈥淓very Toyota Camry gets the same treatment on the factory floor. Patients are not like that; they鈥檙e all different.鈥� And each merits close and undivided attention.
Over the past three years, Healy has assembled a team of experts鈥斺�渇rankly, world leaders in nursing, surgery, hospital management,鈥� he said, including the past presidents of the American College of Surgeons, the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists. The team will perform a deep diagnostic evaluation of a client hospital, including document reviews, site visits, and interviews with everyone from executives to janitors, before delivering their report. 鈥淎nd then we help them over six months to implement our recommendations.鈥�
The group has worked with several clients already, Healy said, 鈥渂ut most of our referrals have been word-of-mouth.鈥� Healy and colleagues wanted to spread the word to more hospitals as well as non-hospital surgery centers (e.g., outpatient plastic surgery clinics) and other clients, such as medical malpractice insurance companies, regulators, and ownership groups looking to acquire new hospitals.
鈥淲hat we need is a marketing program,鈥� Healy said. 鈥淲e want to develop a message that鈥檚 going to resonate with the key players.鈥�
From left: Christopher MacArthur, M.B.A. 鈥�19; Rozanna Penney, M.B.A. 鈥�20; Professor Jon Kerbs; and Caroline Crawford, M.B.A. 鈥�20
That鈥檚 where the Carroll School came in. Healy earned his bachelor鈥檚 in biology from 蜜桃传媒鈥檚 Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, and he remains an active alumnus. With his wife, he endowed the Anne and Gerald B. Healy Scholarship for Academic Excellence for the Eagles football player with the highest grade-point average. 鈥淚鈥檓 very proud of my relationship with Boston College,鈥� he said.
So when he sought marketing expertise, Healy turned to the Carroll School鈥檚 John and Linda Powers Family Dean Andy Boynton, who put him in touch with the graduate programs, which in turn developed an experiential learning opportunity together with Jon Kerbs, a senior lecturer in the Marketing Department.
To help craft a marketing strategy for OR Dx + Rx, the graduate programs selected three part-time M.B.A. students through a competitive process: Rozanna Penney, M.B.A. 鈥�20, director of perioperative services and chief certified registered nurse anesthetist at Heywood Hospital in Gardner, Massachusetts; Caroline Crawford, M.B.A. 鈥�20, the assistant director of state and local research for the Carroll School鈥檚 Center for Retirement Research; and Christopher MacArthur, M.B.A. 鈥�19, drug and drug delivery specialist at Pfizer.
In this directed practicum, as the arrangement is termed, the students earned course credit by consulting for Healy鈥檚 startup. Throughout the fall, they researched the market, studied potential competitors, and developed a strategy.
Having a real-life client made a big difference. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 just learning in a classroom or getting through a chapter of a book,鈥� said Penney. 鈥淓verybody was really enthusiastic about this project, and everybody brought a different skill set, which complemented the others nicely.鈥�
鈥淲hile I鈥檝e learned about market research in class,鈥� said Crawford, 鈥渢his project required me to pick up the phone and speak to experts in the field鈥� in order to produce a competitor analysis. She also applied what she鈥檇 learned in accounting classes to a review of income statements and balance sheets.
Penney confessed to some nervousness going into the students鈥� presentation in December. 鈥淗ow would we come across, making suggestions to these established physicians?鈥� she recalled wondering. (Penney鈥檚 own decade-long hospital career surely helped, though. 鈥淚鈥檝e always been concerned with patient safety in the OR,鈥� she said.)
The details of the marketing strategy that the students proposed must remain confidential at present. However, reached again after the meeting, Healy spoke highly of the students鈥� efforts. 鈥淭hey made very cogent recommendations,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e can and will implement a majority of their recommendations very quickly. . . . I thought they did an outstanding job.鈥�
Kerbs concurred. 鈥淚 was just so impressed,鈥� said the lecturer, whose 30 years鈥� industry bona fides include work in branding, product management, sales promotion, and advertising as well as marketing strategy.
The value of such an experiential learning engagement, Kerbs said, is threefold. 鈥淔irst, the chance to work on your critical thinking. They were exposed to a lot of unfamiliar data, new concepts, new industry, new people. To pull all that together and make sense of it requires honing your critical thinking.鈥�
Second, Kerbs continued, is teamwork. 鈥淭hree M.B.A. students, over the course of a semester, working full time, taking different scheduled evening classes, came together and worked as a team to finish a product. Finally, 鈥淭hey had to advocate for their point of view,鈥� Kerbs said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 always a valuable learning experience for M.B.A. students.鈥�
On all three points, Kerbs said, the students hit the mark. 鈥淭he thinking was spot-on; they came together as a team to get this done; and they were really persuasive and clear in their communication鈥� at the final client meeting.
鈥淎nd the win-win is,鈥� Kerbs added, 鈥渢he firm got three months of really smart people thinking about their business and making recommendations that were actionable to help grow their business.鈥�
As part-time students, the trio found the directed practicum particularly useful. Working full-time, 鈥渨e aren鈥檛 able to take advantage of summer internships,鈥� pointed out Crawford. The applied learning project with OR Dx + Rx 鈥渉elped fill that gap,鈥� she said, giving them an alternative way 鈥渢o try on new roles and hone skills we are looking to develop for our long term careers.鈥�
Best of all, the students made a positive contribution on a serious issue. 鈥淚t鈥檚 useful for us as a company to have a marketing strategy,鈥� said Healy, 鈥渂ut the point is that it furthers our main goal: to make surgery safer and of the highest quality for patients. So in addition to the experience gained, the students have participated in a program that has a societal benefit. And that, of course, goes along with the mission of Boston College and the Jesuit education, that of making the world a better place.鈥�
Patrick L. Kennedy, Morrissey College 鈥�99, is a writer in Boston and the co-author of聽Bricklayer Bill: The Untold Story of the Workingman鈥檚 Boston Marathon.
Photography: Lee Pellegrini