Day Kimball Healthcare (DKH) is a non-profit health care organization serving the northeastern Connecticut, southcentral Massachusetts and northwestern Rhode Island communities. The mission of DKH (2011) is “to meet the health needs of our community through our core values of clinical quality, customer service, fiscal responsibility and local control” (para. 4). A comprehensive health care system, DKH offers primary care and a multitude of medical and surgical specialties along with sophisticated diagnostics by offering a comprehensive network of more than 1,000 employees including more than 200 physicians, surgeons and specialists. DKH is comprised of Day Kimball Hospital, four community health care centers, Day Kimball HomeCare, Day Kimball Hospice & Palliative Care of Northeastern Connecticut, Day Kimball HomeMakers, and Physician Services of Northeast CT, LLC.

Services

DKH provides a host of services to the community, including:

• primary medical care,

• emergency medical care,

• surgical care,

• palliative and hospice care,

• home health care, and

• social services

DKH appears to strive towards providing a comprehensive health care solution to the community that is robust, yet limited in specialty, especially critical care, trauma, and pediatric services.

Environment

Population

The primary catchment area for DKH includes the Connecticut towns of Brooklyn, Canterbury, Eastford, Killingly, Plainfield, Pomfret, Putnam, Sterling, Thompson, and Woodstock, and the Rhode Island towns of Foster and Glocester. According to the available U.S. Census data (2010), the population served is nearly 92,000 with average growth in the last ten years of nearly 9%. The median age of the catchment population (37.8) is merely 3 months older than the median age of the Connecticut population (37.4). The median household income is $66,422 (CT: $67,034).

Competition

DKH is the primary health care provider within the defined catchment area. Some of the population, however, rely on three other community-level hospitals, Backus Hospital (Norwich, CT), Southbridge Hospital (Southbridge, MA), and Windham Hospital (Windham, CT). Additionally, some of the population with advanced disease processes rely strictly on the primary and emergency care services of the nearest urban centers (Worcester, MA, Hartford, CT, and Providence, RI), with many of DKH’s emergency patients transferred to these tertiary care centers for trauma, critical care, and pediatric specialties.

Environment

DKH, as a health care organization, can be adversely affected by patterns of infectious diseases within the community. As each season mounts, the health care system becomes overwhelmed and requires coordination between other health care facilities in the area.

Additionally, a large disaster would strain the resources of DKH; however, this would be a temporary issue, resolving as the disaster winds down. There is ample opportunity within the catchment area for a disaster to unfold, including traffic on the major highway that divides the catchment area as well as the number of large manufacturing entities in the area.

Assessment

Strengths. DKH provides comprehensive long-term health care to community members. DKH enjoys a strong and comprehensive relationship with a large network of physicians and other primary care providers.

Weaknesses. DKH has no intensivists, physicians with expertise in critical care, and provides very limited critical care service. As a result, DKH must transfer many cases to other facilities to rule in or rule out critical illnesses or injuries, which negatively affects earnings.

Another weakness lies in DKH’s reliance on electronic patient care reporting. DKH uses a number of patient care reporting platforms that do not integrate with each other. This creates a need for over-redundancy and opportunities for patient care errors. Further, a fully integrated system would allow for health care partners to access up-to-date patient care information without delay.

Opportunities. Opportunities exist for DKH to expand their services by further decentralizing the current services offered and concentrating on which scopes of service to expand or improve upon. By improving laboratory reporting standards and facilitating full integration of patient reporting, patients of DKH will be able to obtain a more standardized level of care throughout the health care continuum.

DKH should cultivate their relationship with the public by being more active and visible within the community performing screenings, vaccinations, blood drives, as well as other public relations endeavors.

Another opportunity exists with the patient population who suffer from critical illness or injury that is yet to be determined. These patients face risk in transport to tertiary care centers when, often times, the transfer is unwarranted by later findings. By cultivating relationships with specialties in the tertiary care centers, these patients could be more fully determined to need (or, not need) transfer to tertiary care centers, keeping the financial reward of caring for patients in-house while obtaining specialist coordination.

Threats. The largest threat to DKH, as with any organization, is its reputation within the community. Funding, which is largely based on governmental and private insurance providers, is also a considerable threat that must be managed continuously. However, other threats are significant and can be actively managed.

Pandemics are unlikely to occur but present catastrophic scenarios if they do, indeed, occur. Pandemic influenza, as well as other pandemic diseases, presents a situation of an increasing need for awareness and preparation.

Unpredictable weather in the northeastern Connecticut presents a likely and significant threat to the provision of health care. Recent and historical storms have proven to impede access and egress to and from patients both out in the community and at the hospital.

Discussion

This SWOT analysis is limited by the a posteriori knowledge and perceptions of the author, a paramedic who is active within the health care system, and it is limited in the scope of an academic exercise to practice SWOT analyses.

However, DKH has overcome many adversities in the past and continues to grow, but seemingly without proper direction. The efforts thus far seem disjointed and without a clear structure or coherent path into the future. DKH would benefit from an internal SWOT analysis that could be performed without the limitations inherent herein.

References

Day Kimball Healthcare. (2011). Day Kimball Healthcare. Retrieved from http://www.daykimball.org

U.S. Census Bureau. (2010). 2010 census data. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/