Prescription for Success
Health care company designs and builds relationships with architects and contractors
HCA, a health care company that operates nearly 200 hospitals and surgery centers, has little time to train, educate and move its own people from job site to job site.
 Profile
Tom Gormley
Vice President of
Design and Construction
| | HCA
HCA, a health care company, operates nearly 200 hospitals and surgery centers in more than 20 states. The company has more than $21 billion in assets and annual revenues of about $22 billion. | | | |
Instead, Tom Gormley, vice president of design and construction, has learned it’s farmore efficient to rely on outside contractors to meet the firm’s design and construction needs.
Go with what you know
Gormley and his team of construction managers, equipment managers and others use a core group of architects and general contractors to do most of the company’s new construction and renovation work. Working with outside service providers, Gormley says, allows HCA to reduce its corporate overhead while maintaining expertise from one project to the next.
HCA maintains partnerships with six to eight architectural and eight to 10 contractor firms, allowing the company to start design and construction work quickly once it decides to build a new facility. That speed is important in the health care industry. Often, a hospital or clinic can achieve early financial success because it is open before facilities built by competitors.
In addition, Gormley says, maintaining relationships with partners that understand HCA and health care construction allows projects to progress smoothly. The firms understand requirements of health care construction, particularly those of renovations and expansions in which construction dirt, dust and debris cannot be allowed to contaminate other portions of the facility.
“I really feel that no matter what business you’re in, success depends on people,” he says.
HCA has geographically dispersed partners to handle the 57 projects it has under way, ranging in locations from west of the Rocky Mountains to Florida. It’s not uncommon for architect and contractor personnel assigned to HCA projects to move around the country. Gormley says one contractor moved a project superintendent from a project in Myrtle Beach, S.C., to one in Richmond, Va., and then to Oklahoma City.
“In some ways, the guy is as loyal to HCA as he is to his own company,” Gormley says.
From a financial standpoint, Gormley says, HCA may pay more from the outset for projects than if each project was sent to bid. But by the time a project is complete, the company saves money because of the understanding that partners have of both health care construction and HCA’s facilities. There are fewer change orders and projects are able to open on time because of strict adherence to construction timetables. The quality is also better and the company has been able to avoid litigation.
It Comes Down to Trust
To guard against complacency among its partners, Gormley says, HCA will occasionally bid a project to see how the numbers stack up. In addition, not every project that HCA builds is done through partners. The company will hire specialty architects and contractors to do projects such as parking garages.
“You kind of sample the waters from time to time to make sure everybody’s keeping honest,” he says.
Some of the biggest savings HCA sees, however, result from the trust that the company has in its partners. Gormley says the company doesn’t purchase bonds for its projects on general contractors or any subcontractors. By self-insuring, the company saves 1 to 1.5 percent on each project. With the number and magnitude of projects HCA completes in a given year, those savings add up to millions.
Keeping Partners Informed
Although much of the responsibility for staying abreast of health care design and construction techniques lies with HCA’s partners, the company does spend time and money to educate architects and contractors about its needs.
A couple of times each year, Gormley says, HCA invites its partners to its headquarters in Nashville to hear from doctors and other health care professionals. There, partners can hear about the ramifications of changes in health care technologies and patient care on facilities.
The gathering concludes with a charity golf tournament, Gormley says. Participants wear their schools’ colors and vie for a $5,000 donation to the winner’s alma mater. Another $40,000 is distributed to others schools that have architecture, construction and engineering programs. That time allows partners to learn about what others are doing.
“Guys are competitive, but when you get them in an environment that builds camaraderie, they start sharing information,” he says.
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