Annette Walker loves “architecting the future of an organization … figuring out how to make sure it’s here 100 years from now and how it anticipates the challenges.”
Her visionary approach is based on more than 30 years in the healthcare industry, in part on lessons she experienced firsthand.
The president of strategy at Providence St. Joseph Health, an Irvine-based nonprofit health system that recently combined Providence Health & Services and St. Joseph Health, said that early on in her career with another company, she had to conduct a series of layoffs, including a favorite employee who was left jobless “because of bad leadership decisions.”
She committed herself to “building opportunities and enterprises for people so that wouldn’t happen again. I went into strategy and have been there ever since.”
Walker is one of five Orange County executives and entrepreneurs who received Innovator of the Year awards from the Business Journal on Sept. 22 at Hotel Irvine (see related stories, pages 4, 6, 8 and 9).
The mother of two sons and four daughters and the grandmother of 10 was honored for spearheading creation of Wellness Corners, a concept that brought medical and related services to “where people live, work and play.”
She arrived in 2005 when St. Joseph “put a stake in the ground and said, ‘We see healthcare changing, and in order to really make a difference we have to get more proactive about health and wellness and get on the front end of disease development.’”
The $6 billion, 16-hospital system developed “several robust” employee wellness programs that were deemed among “the best in the nation on participation,” according to Walker, “but we could see that unless we are in regular patterns of people’s lives, we didn’t have a chance of becoming their health partner. We could stay their sick partner, because when they are sick, they have to find us. But if we want to be their consultative partner and make sure they are healthy, we have to get into different places and be more accessible to them.”
That provided an opportunity for innovation—her “favorite playground.”
New Wellness Model
St. Joseph opened the first of seven Wellness Corners in August 2013 at the Park Place mixed-use campus in Irvine, offering primary care, preventive screenings and urgent care services to St. Joseph’s employees and people who live and work near the property—about 3,500 in all.
The second Wellness Corner kicked off in September 2014 at the Village and Park luxury apartment complexes next to Irvine Spectrum Center. The facility, built in partnership with the landlord, Newport Beach-based developer Irvine Company, provides clinic-like services to the nearly 11,000 residents, including physical examinations; treatment of minor illnesses; telehealth, which connects patients with doctors via technology; sports medicine and travel medicine; and aesthetic services, such as Botox injections. Programs geared toward promoting healthy lifestyles range from yoga and personalized weight control and fitness regimens, to nutrition coaching and menu planning.
The third Wellness Corner opened in January 2015 at the Jamboree Center office complex on Jamboree Road near the San Diego (I-405) Freeway. It also was built in partnership with Irvine Co., owner of the six-building office and hotel complex, and offers similar services to roughly 200 businesses that employ approximately 4,000 at the Jamboree Center, along with guests of Hotel Irvine.
The next two facilities were tailor-made to the needs of large Irvine-based employers Western Digital Corp. and Masimo Corp.
The 4,600-square-foot DRIVE Wellness Center at WD’s headquarters opened in July 2015 and serves the company’s 1,500 employees, their spouses and dependents. The private facility offers primary and preventive services, lab testing, on-site medication dispensing, behavior health, physical therapy, acupuncture and chiropractic care. It exceeded its first-year participation goal in eight months and earned a 98% user satisfaction rating, according to St. Joseph data. Employee productivity savings during the time period were estimated at $670,000.
Masimo Wellness Corner opened in August 2015, serves 550 employees, and is staffed by a full-time wellness coach and registered nurse. It also has a test lab and telehealth options.
Masimo
Concepts like Masimo’s Wellness Corner and WD’s DRIVE are convenient for workers and represent health services that traditional hospital chains hadn’t provided in the past but that have changed hospital systems’ “relationship with employers,” Walker said.
“Usually, the employer buys a health plan from an insurance company, and then they try to figure out how to make that plan work in a network that they never talked to,” she said. “So what’s really different here is we are sitting down with the employer and their benefits planners … to figure out how to make it all work … We didn’t just open up a few clinics—we are redesigning how the care is given and what kind of care people really need.”
Another partnership with Irvine Co. resulted in a 17,000-square-foot center called Kinetic that opened in February. The facility, also known as Newport Center Wellness Corner, serves 5,800 with comprehensive primary care services, treatment for acute and chronic conditions, lifestyle-focused management strategies, routine care, physicals and well-woman exams. It also includes an upscale fitness center and a boutique training studio called The Zone.
Anaheim Promenade, a 1,135-square-foot Wellness Corner in Anaheim, opened last month. The site serves area residents and workers, as well as employees of St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare’s administrative office. It offers primary care for minor illnesses and chronic conditions; lifestyle coaching in nutrition, sleep, stress and exercise; specialty testing for cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes and vitamin and mineral deficiencies; and routine laboratory services.
The hospital system plans to restore a historic YMCA building on Civic Center Drive in Santa Ana and turn it into the eighth Wellness Corner. It will feature a fitness center, group classes and lifestyle coaching.
“They are moving from pilot (program) to mainstream in our system,” Walker said, adding that “if you want to be an innovator, you have to be a little bit brave, because sometimes things aren’t going to work. You’ve got to have enough confidence that you trust your instincts enough to think you can make this work and then enough humility when it doesn’t work to accept it and move on. Go to the next one.”
