They will know a culture—you can't fake it”: An interview with Texas Medical Center’s president and CEO Bill McKeon
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the McKinsey on Healthcare podcast. My name is Philippe Barboza, and I'm a senior partner at the McKinsey & Company offices in Houston. And I'm enormously privileged today to speak with Bill McKeon, the president and CEO of the Texas Medical Center.
Good morning, Philippe.
I would love to start the conversation with you letting our audience know a little bit about the Texas Medical Center and how you are transforming healthcare.
Sure.
What makes the Texas Medical Center unique?
Thank you, Philippe. So what's unique about the Texas Medical Center is the name itself is actually quite misleading. When we all think of medical centers, almost every city around the world has a medical center. This is actually a medical city. It's comprised of over 60 institutions, 120,000 employees, and as you mentioned before, We provide care to over 10 million patients each year on this main campus. The GDP for the Texas Medical Center is over $22 billion, which would make us the eighth largest business district in the United States. So it's unlike anything I've ever seen in my world travels, and certainly in the United States, this constellation of the largest collection of minds and resources anywhere in the world dedicated to advancing human care.
It is much more of a medical city than it is a medical center.
And Texas Medical Center is the largest medical city in the world. How would you say it is helping to transform healthcare in the US?
I think it has a long history of doing that through clinical. I remember when I used to run the program at Stanford University and I looked at some of the volumes of the time of how many heart procedures were being done. And we were one of the largest heart programs in the country on the West Coast. And they were doing more heart procedures at the Texas Medical Center in a day than we were doing in several weeks. And so it really became a calling card for if you wanted to do some of the greatest, most innovative clinical work, you came to the Texas Medical Center because it had the volume. And a lot of times when you're looking at unique cases, you have to have a large volume to be proficient at it.
The medical center has drawn people here from all around the world for hearts, procedures in brains, cancer, number one cancer center in the world at MD Anderson. It's the largest children's hospital in the world with Texas Children's. Second part was, and what many people didn't realize is the research capabilities. More research is done on this campus than anywhere in the world. So people don't come here just to be clinicians. They come here to do some breakthrough research. And so many of the research of many of the drugs that are discovered happen on this campus. Many of the surgical procedures that we've learned have been developed on this campus. So that's been really exciting for us.
Bill, you joined the Texas Medical Center in 2013 when the TMC had a very different role with its member institutions. How would you describe the landscape you faced back then?
When I came in and found the organization, the Texas Medical Center Corporation, which serves as the umbrella for this medical city, I saw that it was largely focused on infrastructure, physical infrastructure. So many of the things it touted when I arrived here, it had the largest parking operation in North America. It had the largest laundry, the largest chilled water and steam facility. It managed over 10 miles of streets and security across 1400 acres. So in each one of those examples, it was always about physical infrastructure. And I thought there was so much of a greater opportunity for this organization to drive many of the programmatic opportunities across this medical center.
Tell us a little bit about what you've achieved as an organization, and then more importantly, the vision and the plans for the Texas Medical Center, which is so energizing.
I think the first achievement that we all accomplished was we really right-sized the organization and brought in a lot of partnerships and expertise. We really thought, unless we can be world-class in what we're doing and operating, we're going to bring partners in to help us do that.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:36
2
What makes the Texas Medical Center unique?
0:36–8:58
3
How is the Texas Medical Center transforming healthcare in the US?
8:58–17:32
4
What challenges did the Texas Medical Center face when Bill McKeon joined?
17:32–23:59
5
What achievements has the Texas Medical Center accomplished under Bill McKeon's leadership?
23:59–26:42
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