By: SHARON H. FITZGERALD
Luke Gregory
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Stretching Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC) ability to treat patients closer to their homes is what drives Luke Gregory, who is at the helm of Vanderbilt’s business venture activities.
Gregory joined Vanderbilt last August with a string of titles: assistant vice chancellor for Health Affairs, senior vice president and chief business development officer. Yet, he described his job, a new position at Vanderbilt, in simpler terms: “The notion is to look off-campus. So when I talk about business developments, the relationships I’m developing are off-campus. That’s where my energy is spent. Some of it is strategic and some of it is just to accommodate the growth of the hospital.”
VUMC’s vice chancellor for Health Affairs, Harry Jacobson, created the position after Norman Urmy, who handled much of the medical center’s business strategy, retired, and Jeff Kaplan resigned to take a position in Ohio. Kaplan supervised regional healthcare network development, construction, healthcare contracting, space and facilities management, parking and the Center for Health Services. Thus, Kaplan’s network development duties, combined with Urmy’s duties, were folded in with small business-advancement responsibilities in other areas of the medical center to create “a formalized, concerted, focused, disciplined effort,” said Gregory, who has a half-dozen professionals on his team.
Gregory pointed to relationships already existing between Vanderbilt and Maury Regional Hospital as illustrative of what he’d like to accomplish in other Middle Tennessee communities. Vanderbilt manages and staffs Maury Regional’s open-heart program. “So a Vanderbilt faculty member is doing open-heart surgery every day of the week in Columbia at Maury Regional. We aren’t transferring those patients to Nashville; we’re doing it there. So you get the competence and depth of Vanderbilt University in the local community,” he explained. Vanderbilt does the same thing with Maury Regional’s neonatal intensive-care unit, and the two entities invested together in a diagnostic imaging center in Spring Hill.
Gregory said he sees opportunities for similar ventures in Wilson, Sumner and Williamson counties. Already, 65 Vanderbilt-employed physicians work at Williamson Medical Center. “We’re trying to work within those contiguous counties to Davidson County as far as creating these types of partnerships that are mutually beneficial,” he said.
Vanderbilt is leaving its options open, looking for opportunities with both for-profit and not-for-profit healthcare operations, including hospitals, large healthcare companies and physician groups. Gregory said he is working with a Fortune 50 company — one that he isn’t yet at liberty to publicly identify — that has pinpointed the Nashville area as “a prime market for the development of some new healthcare services.” The joint venture would be equally owned by the company and Vanderbilt, he said.
Gregory acknowledged that Vanderbilt’s reputation brings patients to Nashville from all over the country. “At the same, all hospitals will tell you that healthcare is local, so we have to make sure we do a good job locally of meeting the needs of the community,” he said. “And there are other good hospitals that are doing that, too, so we have to be competitive.” Yet he also pointed out that an entity that is a competitor one day just may be a partner the next. “It can be schizophrenic at times,” he said.
Gregory said the medical center’s Vision 2020, is the marching orders for his office. The VUMC strategic plan encourages:
- achieving “results that matter,”
- transferring knowledge, and
- creating an impact on society.
“Those initiatives are our backdrop, and now we’re examining what we can do in the regional market that will support and optimize the services of what we call the business enterprise,” he said. He defines Vanderbilt’s business enterprise as the four hospitals for children, adults, rehabilitation and psychiatric treatment.
Another goal behind Gregory’s work is to free space on the Nashville campus. He noted that there are days when Vanderbilt’s inpatient towers are full and the surgery schedule is booked solid. Thus, treating patients in their communities answers a Vanderbilt need while also offering patient convenience.
Already, the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center boasts a freestanding location in Williamson County and a site in conjunction with Clarksville’s Gateway Medical Center. “We’re looking at doing two more of those in this marketplace,” he said. In addition, Gregory said his office is in conversations with two communities regarding projects with the Vanderbilt Heart Institute. And then there’s Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, which “every hospital, not just in Tennessee but in the Southeast, would love to have,” he said. Therefore, Gregory is in discussions with three area hospitals regarding inpatient pediatric units boasting the coveted Monroe Carrell Jr. moniker.
“For us to put the name Vanderbilt on it, we have to have the confidence that it is as good as coming to the main hospital on campus – the practice of medicine, the technology, all of the ancillary services that support the care are equal or better,” he said.
Luke Gregory was formerly CEO for Blakeford, Inc., a senior housing and healthcare company. Prior to his role at Blakeford, he was senior vice president at Baptist Hospital and Northeast Georgia Health System; vice president for business development with LifeTrust America, an assisted-living company; and a turnaround consultant affiliated with Nashville-based Clayton Associates, a healthcare venture-capital company. Gregory has assisted more than two dozen private and public healthcare companies with business development and acquisitions.
January 2008
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