Health Alliance gets it right on supplier, workforce inclusion
Dennis Robb, senior vice president of supply chain management for Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati was awarded the 2008 Corris Boyd Leadership and Diversity Award from The Federation of American Hospitals for fostering leadership and supplier diversity in the healthcare industry. This year, Robb received the Contracting Professional of the Year Award from The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.
Cincinnati’s largest health care provider Health Alliance of Greater Cincinnati five years ago ago received a “D’’ grade from an diversity consulting firm for their supplier inclusion practices. Embarrassed by the poor inclusion performance, company officials met the challenge to improve their grade head on and are now setting and meeting high goals in contracting with minority-owned and women-owned businesses, along with setting an example of impressive levels of diversity in all levels of the company’s workforce.
Health Alliance is one of the largest employers and purchasers in the region as the parent company of University Hospital, Jewish Hospital, Drake Center, Alliance Primary Care, West Chester Medical Center and Fort Hamilton Hospital.
The progress Health Alliance has made in the last five years since President and CEO Ken Hanover came on board in 2005 has been significant. In 2005, Health Alliance spent $4.3 million – just one percent of its total purchases that year – with just 12 diverse suppliers. Company figures show that in 2008, $34 million – or 10 percent of the company’s expenditures – went to minority-owned and women-owned businesses, all local. Also in 2008, minority-owned and women-owned businesses provided 34 percent of the work that went into the construction of the Lindner Center of Hope, a new behavioral and health center in Mason.
The success of Hanover’s effort to change how this company looks at diversity can be attributed to bringing Dennis Robb into the position of vice president of supply chain management, and the large, diverse Supplier Diversity Team of outside advisors that meets weekly to discuss how the health care system should best reflect the community it serves.
“There was a negative perception of the Health Alliance’s economic inclusion participation in 2005,’’ Robb said. “We began in earnest to establish supplier diversity as an important initiative in 2006, even developing and reporting our progress on a diversity scorecard and having weekly meetings with our Supplier Diversity Team to change this perception.’’
Robb also brought on board Howard Elliott of the supplier diversity consulting firm of Pope & Associates of Cincinnati for guidance in how to go about beefing up economic inclusion at the health care company. The initiative to include businesses that were owned by minorities and women showed tremendous results in 2006, when more than $23 million of Health Alliance’s supplier expenditures were spent with those businesses. Those same expenditures were at $18 million in 2007, as Health Alliance tightened certification standards and provided certification training. In 2007, the first African American architect hired by the company – DNK Architects – designed the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at University Hospital. That same year the number of local diverse suppliers increased from 10 to 87. Also, representatives from other community groups – the Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Chamber Cincinnati USA, and others – were added to the Supplier Diversity Team.
In the opening months of this year, more than $20 million has been spent with diverse businesses, including about $18.5 million in the construction of the recently opened West Chester Medical Center, which reached 17.35 percent in economic inclusion. Significant post-construction expenditures for this project were made with the minority-owned River City Furniture, Enriching Spaces, Art Resource Team - all of Cincinnati - and Integritech, a Columbus minority-owned communications company.
Also this year, the $2.8 million construction of University Hospital’s Women’s Health Center was led by the construction management team of Foxx /Danis, with Foxx a certified minority-owned business. About 25 percent of those subcontracts were with minority-owned and women-owned businesses. Also this year, economic inclusion reached 18 percent in the ongoing construction of the Gebhart Center Fort Hamilton Hospital in Hamilton.
“The Health Alliance’s supplier diversity program is a process by which certified small, minority and women-owned businesses are given an equal chance to bid for our projects and services,’’ Robb said. “By keeping these dollars with local small and minority-owned businesses, we help ensure that many of Greater Cincinnati’s neighborhoods remain economically vibrant. Supplier and workforce inclusion makes us a healthier company.’’
Betty Owens, a Native American who owns Ameridian Specialty Services Inc., was awarded the contract to repair a roof that was damaged at Jewish Hospital the morning of Thanksgiving 2008. Jewish had previously worked with Ameridian, which installed windows, resurfaced a parking garage deck and in other projects, and hospital officials were pleased with the company’s quality of work, service and competitive pricing. By 10 a.m. that holiday morning, a crew from Ameridian was busy removing and repairing the damaged roof.
Owens said, “The Health Alliance is one of our largest clients and their diversity program is very real. I appreciate their commitment to the women-owned and minority-owned businesses. You know what is expected, and they make their needs clear.’’
Diversity leadership at Health Alliance also extends to the workforce of about 9,600 employees. As of Dec. 31, 2008, minority employees comprised 28.2 percent of the workforce and 77.5 percent of the employees were women.
Women head all of Health Alliances’ health care facilities, including Lynn M. Oswald, senior vice president, Fort Hamilton Hospital; Aurora Lambert, senior vice president, The Jewish Hospital; Lee Ann Liska, senior vice president and executive director, University Hospital; Karen Bankston, senior vice president, Drake Center Inc.; and Carol King, senior vice president, West Chester Medical Center. Bankeston is African American.
“Like Procter & Gamble and Toyota Manufacturing USA, we at the Health Alliance want to be reflective of our customer base,’’ Robb said. “We want to be recognized not only as a safety net in providing healthcare services, but also as a an employer of and purchaser of the services provided by people of different ethnicity, culture and color.’’
Health Alliance partners with Broadlane, a national healthcare provider with a commitment to inclusive business practices. Broadlane has assisted Health Alliance minority-owned supplier Orchem Inc., a company founded and operated (with the help of his daughter) by Cincinnati basketball legend Oscar Robertson of Cincinnati, in the national distribution of its cleaning products.
Ruby Kern, vice president, enterprise accounts for Broadlane, said Robb’s passion to promote diversity at the Health Alliance has made the company stronger and provided opportunities for financial health and growth among local small businesses.
“The challenges we have in our city go beyond embracing our differences,’’ Kern said. “Our challenge is to provide opportunities to education, a commitment to raise the standard of health for all citizens in the community, and to allow all people to have a shot at this American Dream. There are (small business) firms in the area that for two, three or four decades never got a job with this hospital company until this initiative was underway. Now more than $93 million has been spent by Health Alliance with certified minority business enterprises and small business enterprises in the last five years.’’
Robb said Health Alliance wants women business owners to step forth. They are the third leg of this (diversity) stool,’’ he added.
Elliott said the process was first met with apathy and even resistance by some company executives. “But we brought those who were passive or resisting together and let them know this was not going away, that we have to change our behavior,’’ he said.
That done, Elliott, Robb and the team put together a strategic plan to make Health Alliance a leader in the community in inclusion practices. They sought advice from people in those companies in the region that are best at diversity and inclusion practices, such as at Proctor & Gamble, Johnson Controls, Kroger’s, Toyota and Cincinnati Public Schools. They invited minority and women-owned firms to make presentations at their weekly roundtable meetings. They set benchmarks for inclusion. They went to the African American Chamber’s networking meetings. They invited contractors from all over the region to an event at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and told them it would not be business as usual at the Health Alliance and the company was going to break inclusion records.
“The buzz after that Freedom Center meeting was great,’’ Robb said. “People from those firms said nothing like that event had every happened here. We reached out to the community with competitive requests for bid proposals.’’
When the effort to improve inclusion goals began, the Health Alliance had two projects on the drawing boards that would jumpstart their efforts, projects in which they could set major inclusion goals, Elliott said. This brought some early successes that officials could use to show contractors they were serious about being more inclusive.
The diversity team learned a number of things along the way, such as making sure subcontractors got paid weekly to help with their cash flow and the need to honestly communicate with the community about their progress, Robb said.
“If you are trying to change your culture, you communicate that frequently, and you don’t polish the bad news,’’ Robb said. “If it stinks, it stinks, but set a credible benchmark and move on.’’
Everything the company reports is certified, he said. Even the company’s auditor in regard to diversity progress is audited by a Black-owned, woman-owned firm. “There are no shocks when we go to the community, for we communicate a credible report, not one that is suspect,’’ Robb said.
To learn more about what the Health Alliance is accomplishing in the region, visit
http://www.health-alliance.com/PDFs/CommunityBenefitReport.pdf.