Health equity and operations

Main Line Health prides itself on the fact that system leadership teams represent collaborations of individuals from different professions working together in clinical environment workgroups (CEWs) to achieve best patient outcomes, which aligns our definition of the interprofessional team with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) expectations.

CEWs are determined by clinical program focus (such as medicine, surgery, OB/GYN or emergency medicine/ICU). CEWs report to the Systems Clinical Operations, which then reports to the Senior Executive Committee led by the system CEO.

While the leadership structure is heavily matrixed with presidents, regional vice presidents (VPs) and system directors, most clinical teams have a physician and nurse leader, forming a dyadic leadership. This leadership dyad is modeled by an executive duo: a chief medical officer (CMO) and a chief nursing officer (CNO), who routinely lead dyadically.

Further explanation and membership of the system and campus clinical operations, as well as the service lines and programs, are provided in the following:

System clinical operations

System-level executive leadership provides operational oversight of system clinical operations, clinical program performance and clinical infrastructure. Membership includes the CNO, CMO and VP for quality and patient safety, hospital presidents, system CEW leaders and clinical infrastructure leaders. The latter include regional VPs of patient services, regional VPs of medical affairs (VPMA) and regional VPs of administration, as well as the chief medical information officer, and systems’ chairs of emergency medicine, medicine, surgery and OB/GYN.

Campus clinical operations

Campus-level executive leadership provides operational oversight of campus clinical operations, clinical program performance and clinical infrastructure. Membership includes the campus clinical leadership team of the regional VPMA, regional VPs of patient services and administration/presidents working with campus clinical operation leaders and supporting contributors: patient safety specialists, case management, clinical informatics, infection prevention and so on.

Service lines/clinical programs

Service lines/clinical programs and CEWs are commonly used organizational structures to manage the clinical environment. Service lines/clinical programs are structured around clinical conditions. The goals are to organize and design standardized care processes to treat patients across the continuum of healthcare and optimize efficiency and mitigate risk through communication and engagement.

CEWs are an overlapping structure to service lines/clinical programs that manage the clinical environments that support clinical programs in their care delivery. They serve as the basis for our primary work systems.

All the clinical work is coordinated interprofessionally. Each team embraces the STEEEP domains, sets goals to accomplish the work and maintains a dashboard of results. The clinical work is focused around standardization, evidence-based practice and building structure, process and outcomes. Each CEW has an executive leader with a defined role to support the team, obtain resources and remove barriers.