John Baker Email & Phone Number

Des Moines, Ia, Us

• Provided executive leadership, vision, and strategic direction for the Shared Services division (100+ FTEs) – this division is comprised of areas that support multiple business units, eg. the Project Mgmt Office (PMO), Data Integration, Operational Excellence, and Staff Augmentation • Defined, managed and mitigated a monthly, multi-million dollar services revenue model• Refined and maintained a set of core operating metrics used to monitor performance on client services delivery (eg utilization/productivity, capacity modeling, client satisfaction, etc.)• Responsible for client escalation/de-escalation management from understanding root causes for dissatisfaction and driving towards resolution • Delivered high-impact, world-class service to our client base - managed and improved functions that are necessary to implement, optimize and support our technology efficiently and successfully• Identified and guided/coached implementation of improvement projects designed to continuously scale and improve performance for internal teams and clients alike

Chicago, Illinois

• Continued to oversee and lead the Continuous Improvement product and practice but also started transitioning into more strategic and core operations across the entire Advisory Services division.• Centrally managed the $6M+ Advisory Services division’s key performance indicators: Sales Pipeline, Bookings, Staff/Capacity, Utilization/Productivity, and Revenue. This included monthly and quarterly reporting, identification of performance drivers and gap closure mitigation.• Designed and developed a data-driven strategy to better position Advisory Services offerings that crafted sales discussions not around mock or sample data, but the client’s actual data allowing for the insights and perceived value propositions to be real and relevant.• Led prototype efforts for the strategic growth of external benchmarking offerings. Specifically, using standard diagnostic-related groups (DRGs) as the basis for metrics around cost containment, clinical consistency, insights by omission, and quality excellence.• Part of the company’s Covid-19 leadership team tasked with developing recovery planning strategies for our client base. This included engineering an OR Deferred Case Recovery model to determine what “levers” could be altered to increase case volume, patient throughput, etc. allowing clients to recoup the deferred cases as soon as possible (extended operating hours, weekend cases, room turnover, etc)

Chicago, Illinois

• Responsible for product sales and developing/implementing utilization and adoption strategies within an existing client base of 60+ healthcare systems (~300 hospitals) to secure renewals representing $10M-$15M per year in recurring revenue.• Led a department of 15 consultants charged with finding variation-based analytical insights that could be pursued as cost reduction initiatives, including designing/managing comprehensive savings programs for our network of healthcare clients.• Assisted clients in understanding, managing, and improving their overall financial “health”, focusing on bottom-line cost reduction but including revenue growth and reimbursement integrity when required.• Established stability in a product with high potential but initially relatively low client utilization by being data-centric, extracting the value to align with the client’s perspective(s), and ensuring insights and results were objective, resistant to criticism.

Des Moines, Iowa Area

• Developed and led a comprehensive administrative costs savings program that identified, quantified, prioritized, and implemented “transformational” opportunities in order to achieve a 4-year, $105MM savings goal.• Responsible for developing a new approach for claims processing productivity using 4000+ manual timings to establish goals based on what staff is capable of achieving instead of what they had been achieving; the difference was significant.• Established new process for patient appeals that resulted in a potential decreased turnaround time from 22+ days to 9 days.

Des Moines, Iowa

• Corporate-level resource responsible for improvement efforts and program implementations for existing value-based contracts (ACOs) across the entire system of 16 hospitals and 280+ outpatient clinics.• Facilitated improvement efforts within Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield as they related to “double chronic” patient populations, potentially preventable services, and avoidable ER visits. Total book of business (within our contract) was over $680MM.• Lead corporate instructor for system-wide process improvement training curriculum including courses in: Change Management, Intro to Lean and Six Sigma, Process Mapping and Visio Basics, Data Analysis 101 and Excel, and Work-Out.

• Responsible for the operational and financial performance of the Bed Assignment, Patient Escort, and Environmental Services (EVS) departments in order to bring systemic efficiency across all core throughput-related “effector arms”• Due to a major management reorganization, was responsible for designing and implementing a new operational model for EVS, a hybrid of centralized and decentralized services, covering a budget of $11.5 million and over 300 staff• Gained valuable union and organized labor experience, both in contract negotiation and grievance/arbitration processing• Project lead and operations support for throughput/patient flow information systems implementation (TeleTracking XT upgrade)

• Patient Throughput Portfolio: Led and managed portfolio of projects to improve the patient experience as it relates to Accessing Care, Length-of-Stay, Patient Escort and Bed Turnaround Time. Project examples include: implementing a “ready-to-move” process for all bed requests, improving OR block time schedules to improve inpatient unit capacity, weekend decompression processes for discharges, a comprehensive staffing analysis in EVS and Patient Escort to better meet real-time demand, improved observation unit utilization, and the development of new clinical pathways for “low risk” patient populations• Co-led a taskforce that reduced the operational budget by ~$120 million year-over-year (equivalent to the previous 3 years combined) through the levers of Flex Staff Management, Fixed Staff Productivity, Supply Costs, and Purchased Services• Led award winning and UHC recognized initiative to decrease errors and standardize the patient identification process that resulted in a >98% process compliance rate hospital-wide and a 63% reduction in armband-related errors• Additional examples of project leadership include: patient falls prevention, establishing processes for “never say ‘no’” patients for external transfer, implementing a suicide risk assessment for all Emergency Dept patients, reducing cancellations/no show rates for outpatient radiology, and the creation of a “difficult discharge” response team to address long length of stay patients• Facilitated work-out/rapid improvement sessions and Kaizen Events. Examples include: unit-based patient and staff satisfaction, patient alias management, ID theft prevention, and improving resolution time for patient grievances• Co-Lead Instructor for organizational training courses in Project Leadership (DMAIC) / Lean Methodologies and Excel Skills

Taught quarterly collegiate-level courses in Introduction to Psychology and Freshmen Student Success

• Collected and analyzed patient demographic data from VA hospitals nationwide to generate volume and trending reports• Conducted consultative assessments for individual employee’s job performance and managerial skills as rated by their peers

Master Of Arts (M.A.), Clinical Psychology

Bachelor'S Degree, Psychology

Education record