CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF PHILADELPHIA - SUCCESS STORY
Transforming a Children’s Hospital into a data-driven, decision-making organization
THE BACKGROUND
Established in 1855, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was the nation’s first dedicated pediatric hospital. Today, CHOP has more than one million inpatient and outpatient visits annually - and it is one of the nation’s most lauded pediatric care providers. CHOP is ranked second in U.S. News & World Report’s 2021-2022 list of best pediatric hospitals in the country. Affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania, CHOP is an academic medical center and research hospital renowned for revolutionary innovations leading to medical advances that benefit the entire industry and pediatric population.
THE CHALLENGE
In recent years, CHOP’s senior leadership team decided to become a truly data-driven decision-making organization with a focus on leveraging analytics to improve patient care and better detect areas where operational, clinical, or business issues may exist in order to solve them through technology.
An operational and cultural organization transformation would be necessary to meet this goal, including the creation of a new department and the restructuring of existing ones. At the time, CHOP lacked a visionary leader with the necessary mix of technology, operations, and data & analytics expertise to create and execute this strategy.
Equally important, they needed a leader with the personality, temperament, and communication style to manage this change and help transform the culture of the entire organization. A thorough, national search would be required to find the inaugural Chief Data & Analytics Officer (CDAO) and other key members of the data & analytics leadership team.
THE SOLUTION & RESULTS
Recognizing the need to hire a firm they could implicitly trust with the entire search process, CHOP chose to partner with us - Blue Marble Executive Search - a boutique, niche firm known for our core focus of working with pediatric and academic medical centers. CHOP noted our track record of recruiting leaders for other highly respected organizations and recognized that we offer a level of unmatched personalized attention, flexibility, and the emotional intelligence necessary to attract and recruit the right people for their team.
After interviewing and vetting dozens of candidates, our persistent networking ultimately led us to Shakeeb Akhter, who was doing similar work at another renowned academic medical center. We had already created a thorough yet streamlined and efficient interview process, and we were able to plug Shakeeb into it seamlessly. It was unanimous that Shakeeb was the right person for the job. He was very interested but this would require relocation of his young and growing family to Philadelphia, an unfamiliar market.
We worked hand-in-hand with CHOP’s HR team to navigate relocation and all the challenges that come with it. Ultimately, he was offered and accepted the role. Since his hire, Shakeeb has been recognized as a “transformational leader” and has been promoted from CDAO to Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer.
This was only the beginning. Blue Marble’s imprint on CHOP is indelible and the partnership continues to thrive. In the three years since we recruited Shakeeb, we have since successfully led the searches for their Chief Quality & Safety Officer, Senior Director of Clinical Analytics, Senior Director of Revenue Cycle Analytics, and their new Chief Data & Analytics Officer.
OUR PROCESS WITH CHOP
NEEDS ASSESSMENT
We met with the key stakeholders to discuss their short and long-term strategic goals to understand the culture and identify target organizations and specific people that might be doing similar work. We dug deep into why the position was created, what their needs were, and their desired outcomes.
POSITION OVERVIEW
We created a detailed position overview, which served as an important tool to ensure both our team and CHOP were on the same page. Along with our client partners, we fine-tuned this until everyone agreed it was as accurate as possible. It ultimately became an effective marketing tool, providing all prospective candidates with a solid understanding of the opportunity including a position description, organization overview, and background.
RESEARCH & SOURCING
We determined that this search should not be limited to healthcare but also include financial services, hospitality, and insurance industries. We kicked off our very targeted outreach with three contact lists to attack simultaneously: non-healthcare, healthcare, and well-known and influential industry leaders.
RECRUITMENT
With our ability to enthusiastically tell and sell CHOP’s story and present the CDAO role as an exceptional opportunity we were able to attract a deep pool of candidates across multiple industries. This was in no small part due diligent networking and a relentless pursuit of referrals.
SUCCESSFUL PLACEMENTS WITH CHOP:
- CHIEF DATA & ANALYTICS OFFICER
- CHIEF QUALITY & SAFETY OFFICER
- SENIOR DIRECTOR OF CLINICAL ANALYTICS
- SENIOR DIRECTOR OF REVENUE CYCLE ANALYTICS
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EACH OTHER.