For Billy Laing, CFO of City of Hope Cancer Center Phoenix, the path to successful healthcare growth starts in the boardroom and runs through the physician’s office.
“Your physicians are your heartbeat,” Mr. Laing told Becker’s. “I think some organizations can get lost in administrative burden. When you have good physicians delivering good care, that’s what helps you expand quickly. They’re the experts.”
Mr. Laing became CFO of City of Hope Cancer Center Phoenix four years ago. He said the center, which is Arizona’s only freestanding academic cancer center, has grown from operating with only a handful of patients at its 38-bed facility upon opening to now being near full capacity. In the long-term, the facility’s “sweet spot” would be 70-90 beds.
Through partnering closely with clinicians, Mr. Laing has identified care gaps across the state. The center’s notable success has been its leukemia program, which grew to become one of the state’s largest within two years through addressing an underserved need in the community.
“Growth gets really successful when you actually tie it to what patients need in the market,” he said. “As long as you tie your growth to where the gaps in the market are, you have the opportunity to be really successful.”
The CFO-clinician partnership also extends to financial transparency. Mr. Laing said he includes physicians in budget conversations by showing them the cost implications of certain procedures and fostering a shared decision-making culture.
“Having them be a partner in that conversation makes for a much better culture,” he said. “They don’t feel like things are being hidden from them.”
The center has three comprehensive outpatient cancer centers spread across north Phoenix, Scottsdale and Gilbert. Through working with clinicians like City of Hope Cancer Center Phoenix’s interim president and CEO Alan Bryce, MD, it has positioned the center as a major player in the market, particularly on the technology side.
City of Hope Cancer Center Phoenix has also operationalized its own internally developed large language model to help physicians process patient medical histories more efficiently. Rather than having medical records staff manually review documentation, the AI tool helps physicians quickly access the information they need.
“City of Hope is always at the forefront of new equipment,” he said. “If you can get language learning models and other things to help with tasks that reduce that time or automate those tasks via system development, then you are able to optimize your workforce to a level that they’re so much more efficient. They feel like they’re not burnt out, they’re not understaffed. I think that’s where I would love to see things go, because in a lot of ways, healthcare was just so reliant on human labor and human elements that I think technology can help.”
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