Erikson and Soman on partnership and growth
June 15, 2011


Michael Erikson began serving as the interim vice president for Group Health’s Group Practice Division in May, 2011. In that role, he is responsible for care provided to more than 420,000 members at Group Health Medical Centers in Washington state. Prior to his current position, Erikson was vice president of Primary Care Services. 

Here, two Michaels talk about the work ahead.

How are you working together?

M. Erikson: What’s great is that Dr. Soman and I already have history together so I know a lot about him: what drives him from a values perspective, and how he views the world. It’s great that I don’t have to guess, ‘I wonder what he meant by that?’ We are also both driven to succeed and this means we want Group Health to thrive and we want our group practice to be the best place to work and to get care—definitively and without exception.

M. Soman: We’ve been working together since 2005, and during that time we’ve done a lot together. Michael is really capable and he’s drinking from the fire hose right now, trying to absorb all of the intensity of shifting his role. One thing I really appreciate about him is his commitment to do what he says he’s going to do. He follows through, which makes for a really good partnership.

What’s top of mind in your first weeks of partnership?

M. Erikson: We’re both very concerned that many of our care teams are feeling they don’t have enough space to take care of their patients effectively. We have very quickly agreed that we need to respond. We’ve worked with our respective Executive Leadership Team colleagues to get to some solutions more quickly. The other thing that Dr. Soman and I agree on and are absolutely committed to is extending the presence of our group practice into new communities, and expanding it in places where we already have a presence.

M. Soman: The Group Practice has seen an influx of 51,000 enrollees since the end of 2006 and 33,000 have come in since the end of 2009—that’s a sign of very successful growth. But Michael and I are very aware that we also need to make sense of the fact that we’re closing our group practice presence in the Coeur d’Alene community at the same time that overall enrollment is growing.

M. Erikson: I do want to acknowledge that our push to expand and extend the group practice presence probably feels disconnected from what 40 of our people in Coeur d’Alene are experiencing. I was with them last week, and it wasn’t the first time we had talked about the possibility of closure. We reaffirmed that Group Health hasn’t been successful with our group practice model in Coeur d’Alene. This is not because of anything the staff has done. They have been great; their patient experience surveys and clinical quality performance scores really tell that story. The market there is just not seeking what we have to offer, and over the last five years we’ve been steadily losing our ability to keep going.

How do you think we can sustain growth?

M. Soman: After we announced the closure I got an e-mail from a doctor asking when we were going to open a new medical center in a new neighborhood, which is a good question. We haven’t had a new medical center that wasn’t a replacement building for about 22 years. Sustainable growth means figuring out ways to more quickly move into communities where we are in high demand and can maintain our performance on cost, quality and access.

We have to make sure we’re staffed up for growth and have space to give good care and not burn out people. We need space not just in exam rooms, but in operating rooms and all the other places patients need to be seen. So we’re going to have to figure out ways to enter a community with smaller, maybe leased spaces that aren’t $15-$20 million boxes that take three to four years to build. And we’re going to have to grow within the multispecialty sites, where we need more scale to have a thriving, sustainable delivery system.

M. Erikson: There are really two major themes in my first two weeks. And they’ll continue defining our work together. On one hand, we’re in a really operational mode planning for the practical realities and challenges of growth like equipment, space, and having enough people. On the other hand, we flip over to the really focused strategy of how to grow. What do our consultative specialty services business planning and studies from Milliman and other business consultancies teach us about what the group practice can and will become?

M. Soman: Ultimately sustaining growth isn’t about Michael and I being leaders; it’s about teams of seasoned, excellent colleagues and leaders and clinical teams. We both have tremendous confidence in them.

What makes you excited to come to work every day?

M. Soman: We have phenomenal people who work here. There’s a foundation of values in their work, along with passion and level of intent to do right thing that I’ve honestly not seen anywhere else. And we are doing things, in fact, that nobody else can do. It’s very exciting and it keeps evolving. We don’t give ourselves enough credit for what we really are doing that’s innovative right now. The combination of our people, their values and our business model helps us do things that are more like a model for the country than 99 percent of other places in healthcare.

M. Erikson: I think about 1997 when my first meeting of my very first day at work was about layoffs in Central Washington. And within a couple of weeks I learned about some areas of huge financial losses. Here I am this new guy from a behavioral health background and I started thinking what have I done? But I hung in there. We as a company find our way out of hard things and into finding really important things to do. This is a place where creative and great people come to solve significant human problems and make a difference in peoples’ lives. It evokes a level of passion and commitment and intelligence to be working in a community focused on making a real and measurable difference in peoples’ lives.