For the past 25 years, Frank Cirillo has held several senior management positions at the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Currently, Frank is the Senior Vice President and Chief Restructuring Officer. For the past year, he has been working on the Corporation’s priority project- leading the development of an action plan to restructure HHC operations.

IDN Summit (IDN): Describe the project the two of you are working on with New York Health and Hospitals Corporation (NYCHHC).

Frank Cirillo (Cirillo): Find $300 M plus in savings and/or new revenue and achieve the goals of the restructuring plan without impacting HHC’s mission to serve all those regardless of ability to pay.

IDN: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to confront and how have you dealt with that challenge?

Cirillo: The fact that HHC is presently organized to provide full medical and mental health services to everyone at each of the hospitals and clinics regardless of patient volume and financial impact made program closings and consolidations challenging to say the least. We presented data for under-utilized services and provided alternatives whether closely located HHC or other programs such that there can be little argument that HHC would still provide complete service lines and that patients would not be negatively impacted when we closed and consolidated underutilized facilities/programs.
 
IDN: Obviously the NYCHHC is one of the largest healthcare organizations in the world; could you take a moment and discuss how this project could impact smaller organizations?

Cirillo: Whether small hospitals or large healthcare systems—following the format of analyzing all operations with clean, reliable data with no regard for politics, turf, etc. the projects/programs that need to be restructured readily present themselves. The burning platform must exist to force change and then those in power must implement the changes necessary in priority order taking all variables into account.

IDN: Discuss the next phase of restructuring: as you move toward becoming an Accountable Care Organization and providing each patient with a medical home.

Cirillo: HHC is well on its way to assuring ACO designation. HHC is an advanced IDN with a mature Electronic Health Record (EHR or EMR) that will meet the basic requirements of an ACO by the current January 1, 2012 program start date. Most important of the requirements which HHC and others seeking ACO certification must meet are: the entity must have defined processes to a) promote evidenced based medicine, b) report the necessary data to evaluate quality and cost measures, c) employ E-prescribing, d) assure a robust EHR system, e) coordinate patient care, and f) demonstrate it meets patient-centeredness criteria.

As for medical home designation, Gouveneur (one of HHC's long-term care facilities) just received NCQA level 3 medical home certification. We expect each of HHC's facilities will be certified before the end of the calendar year.

IDN: Thank you for taking the time to discuss this project with us; what are some last thoughts you’d like to leave with us.

Cirillo: In my 30 years in healthcare this project was clearly both the most difficult and most rewarding. If an IDN like HHC can develop and implement a change roadmap in such a highly politicized, diversified and unionized environment there is no reason why any operation can not change and improve both patient outcomes and bottom-line performance. If you don’t change and improve you stagnate and eventually die.

Complete Bio:

Frank Cirillo, Senior VP and Chief Restructuring Officer
New York Health & Hospitals Corporation

For the past 25 years, Frank Cirillo has held several senior management positions at the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation. Currently, Frank is the Senior Vice President and Chief Restructuring Officer. For the past year, he has been working on the Corporation’s priority project- leading the development of an action plan to restructure HHC operations with a goal of $300 million plus cost reductions and revenue enhancements. The plan has been completed and has 39 separate projects in five workstreams to be completed by FY 2014. Implementation has begun.

Previously, Frank was the COO of HHC. His span of responsibility included setting policy, contracting, tracking, trending, and coordinating in areas such as: human resources and workforce development; supply chain management and contracting for goods and services; affiliation contracts and training agreements with HHC’s affiliated medical schools; emergency management; and many other corporate functions and operations. Trained in business, finance, and auditing, Frank received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, graduate training from St. John’s University, and holds certification from the “Top 40” executive management program administered by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.