HealthStream 'Constitution' sharpens focus
Milt Capps
Updated: July 23, 2019 - Founder-CEO Frist said the company has more than 50 jobs to fill by year's-end; has spent more than a year updating its Constitution (below); and, is launching 'Streaming Good' social-impact program.-Ed.HealthStream CEO Bobby Frist has provided his 400 employees a "blueprint" for building the company into "a world-class organization."HealthStream Inc. has more than $50 million in annual revenue, provides online learning and research technology and services for healthcare-industry subscribers, and is headquartered in Cummins Station in downtown Nashville. Writing in the company's recently published "HealthStream Constitution" booklet, Frist said the document is intended to ensure all HealthStream employees consistently understand HealthStream's vision, mission, tagline or slogan, values and business principles. He said that achieving world-class standing requires that all HealthStream employees "are unified in our purpose and clear on our intentions." Frist's communications and policy initiative comes as the company and its industry confront economic and market turbulence, as well as rising pressure to add ever-greater value for customers operating within the shifting regulatory environment that contains and largely defines American healthcare.
Those who regularly attend Frist's conference calls with stock analysts who follow the NASDAQ-listed company will find in the Constitution ideas that seem to resonate with investors. HealthStream also stresses it aims generally to deliver "product-based" value, rather than "people-intensive services" tailored While Frist has alluded to the matter in earlier public comments, the emphasis HealthStream places upon the need to "open our model" seems more portentous when viewed as a business principle in the Constitution. HealthStream's emphasis on opening its model - including its products, its platform and its network - suggests greater attention is being paid to unbundling subscription-package components, more flexible partnering for exchange of platform access and content, and perhaps tiering of access to such things as surveys and other tools. The Constitution also contains assertions that HealthStream's business advantages include learning-management technology that is stable and mature; and, that the company enjoys "market leadership." All those and other Constitution components are to be aligned with the HealthStream "Vision" of its corporate future, which is "to improve the quality of healthcare by developing the people who deliver care." In the context of the here and now - where profits and losses happen - that vision is operationally defined in a "mission" statement, in which HealthStream explains it serves customers in the healthcare industry by "...continuous measurement and adaptive learning solutions, resulting in improved patient care, increased productivity, rapid assimilation of new practices, enhanced compliance, and better outcomes." A year ago, Frist called for producing what is described in a brochure covering the Constitution as "a powerful framework to guide our behavior and optimize our actions," while generating "enthusiasm and a sense of honor" in pursuit of success.
Although no formal system has been established to make adherence to the Constitution part of employees' performance reviews, ensuring that knowledge of the Constitution becomes pervasive inside the company is not being left to chance. Condra fairly beamed as she explained that since the course was introduced in October, more than 230 of the company's 400 employees have taken the course, with many of them subsequently affixing their completion certificates to their office doors. Condra explained that instruction on the Constitution has also been incorporated into new-employee orientation sessions, ongoing employee training, recognition programs and achievement celebrations in HealthStream offices in Nashville, Franklin and in Baltimore. Condra has conducted more than 30 small-group training and discussion sessions for employees in those offices. In addition to addressing vision, mission and business principles, the "Excellence in Action" campaign encourages employees to nominate other workers for "RAVE Reviews" - special recognition for efforts that reflect state corporate values, including individual integrity, customer focus, continual learning and performance. In itself, the 22-page HealthStream Constitution is remarkable for many reasons. Also, the piece is also physically hefty, thanks to a combination of stiff cardstock pages and perfect binding, in a striking 10-inch square format.
|