Irvine-based Hoag Orthopedic Institute, a unique for-profit joint venture comprised of two groups of orthopedic surgeons and a nonprofit hospital, is positioned for growth with a new chief executive at the helm.
Jennifer Mitzner, who most recently served as senior vice president and chief financial officer at St. Joseph Hoag Health, said she plans to grow the institute’s presence in Orange County and Los Angeles by building additional outpatient sites.
It opened in 2010, just in time to meet the deadline set forth by federal healthcare reform. Newport Beach-based Hoag Memorial Presbyterian Hospital owns 51%, and physicians own 49%. The governance of the institution is split 50-50, the institute run by doctors.
Mitzner said that while the model cannot be replicated when it comes to inpatient facilities due to federal laws—it includes two ambulatory surgical centers and a 70-bed inpatient hospital—it can be applied to outpatient centers.
“What is opportunistic moving forward for HOI is to … scale by investing in new centers [through] partnerships,” she said, naming physicians and hospitals as potential partners.
She added that the institute has been successful in providing outcomes transparency. The center performed the largest volume of hip and knee replacements in California and was one of 102 hospitals to receive a five-star quality rating last year from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Mitzner said its ability to measure and quantify outcomes—for instance, it had the lowest readmission rate in the country for hip and knee replacements from 2012 to 2015—allows it to be a powerful partner for health plan providers because that means it can work with fixed-dollar payments for care in a compressed reimbursement rate environment.
Experience
Mitzner succeeds Dr. Carlos Prietto, a founding partner and practicing orthopedic surgeon at the institute who served as interim chief executive for more than 18 months. She’s been with the institute since its inception, and has served as a Hoag board member for the past seven years. She joined Hoag in 1994, working mostly with various internal committees, including the finance and audit committee of Hoag’s board and the Hoag Hospital Foundation. She was chief financial offer and senior vice president of Hoag before transitioning into the same role at St. Joseph Hoag in 2014.
Mitzner said the outpatient center growth plan is in the early stages and will develop over the next three to five years. The initiative is separate from Providence St. Joseph Health in Renton, Wash., but Providence St. Joseph is one of the health systems that the institute is “actively dialoguing with.” n
