Strategic plan spurs expansion of Beebe Healthcare
Editor’s note: Just after his fifth anniversary of taking the helm at Beebe Healthcare, President and CEO Dr. David Tam sat down with the editorial board of the Cape Gazette for a wide-ranging discussion about his tenure and plans for more changes. This series of articles will outline the goals and progress.
Dr. David Tam’s introduction as the new CEO of Beebe Healthcare began abruptly.
He had reached an agreement in early 2020 to become the community nonprofit hospital’s new CEO, and his start date was a month away. That’s when word of a deadly virus that was spreading on the other side of the world had arrived in the United States, quickly shutting down the nation and inundating hospitals.
Tam called and asked if he could begin work a month early, and his start date was moved up from April 1 to March 17.
Tam came from Providence Health on the West Coast, which had 52 hospitals in seven states, with a total of 130,000 employees. He had retired as a U.S. Navy captain after a 24-year career in the service.
“One of the reasons I came to Lewes was because I wanted to focus on running and operating a local, nonprofit, independent community health system,” Tam said.
Beebe developed an ambitious five-year strategic plan, which was delayed a couple of years during the COVID-19 pandemic. It calls for expansion of both facilities and services, and increased influence in the community, as well as in state and federal healthcare issues, Tam said.
“We are on track – we are in fiscal year 2025, which ends in a month – but in the last fiscal year, we have worked very hard to continue along the track of executing on the things that we need to do to fully implement a strategic plan by 2028,” Tam said.
A key goal is to physically improve access to healthcare in Sussex County. That means primary care and walk-in care within 20 minutes of every residence in the county by 2028. Tam noted there is technically no urgent care in Delaware because, for some reason, there is no insurance reimbursement for the service. Primary-care physicians leave room in their schedules for walk-in service.
“That’s a pretty ambitious goal if you think about all of Sussex County, but it’s one of the reasons why, over the last year, we’ve built out,” Tam said.
The building boom by Beebe has created facilities in Rehoboth Beach, Milton and Selbyville. A Long Neck office will open in June, and groundbreaking for a Millsboro health campus that will include an emergency room is scheduled to happen soon. There have also been new practices opened in existing buildings, such as Beebe Behavioral Health, Center for Weight Loss Surgery in Georgetown, Beebe Allergy, and Beebe Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. Also, Beebe Primary Care Five Points moved from Savannah Road to a new building.
Despite the new facilities, Beebe can’t do it alone, Tam said, noting the healthcare system is collaborating with other providers to offer specialized services that Beebe does not.
“We do not feel that we need to be in competition with other healthcare systems if the goal is to make sure that patients get care,” Tam said.
In addition to physical expansion, Beebe is investing in technology, including Epic, the largest electronic medical records system in the country. The $50 million cost of purchasing, installation and training related to the system is being paid without borrowing money.
“It’s not just for billing,” Tam said. “Epic is going to be a way for us to really address a lot of healthcare issues, quality healthcare issues, because it allows us to get the best-in-class information platform to deliver higher-quality healthcare.”
It will help the hospital ensure records are kept to support reimbursement from insurance companies, including Medicare and Medicaid, so the hospital can recoup as much money as it can for its services, he said.
It also makes records readily available online to patients, their doctors and other healthcare providers to improve patient care, including scheduling visits and tests.
Beebe will serve as an Epic hub, making the service available to other healthcare providers in the area for a fee. The system will be functional by Nov. 1, but the existing seven records systems used by Beebe will continue to operate for a year as a precaution.
“It’s a national challenge across the board,” Tam said. “Large health systems as well as smaller health systems are all managing their finances. I think for Beebe, the challenge is potentially greater in the impact that it has. This is where Beebe has to be ready to be agile and make decisions that we can do fairly rapidly in order to continue to grow, and not just survive but thrive in terms of taking care of the people in this county.”
Kevin Conlon came to the Cape Gazette with nearly 40 years of newspaper experience since graduating from St. Bonaventure University in New York with a bachelor's degree in mass communication. He reports on Sussex County government and other assignments as needed.
His career spans working as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers in upstate New York, including The Daily Gazette in Schenectady. He comes to the Cape Gazette from the Cortland Standard, where he was an editor for more than 25 years, and in recent years also contributed as a columnist and opinion page writer. He and his staff won regional and state writing awards.
Conlon was relocating to Lewes when he came across an advertisement for a reporter job at the Cape Gazette, and the decision to pursue it paid off. His new position gives him an opportunity to stay in a career that he loves, covering local news for an independently owned newspaper.
Conlon is the father of seven children and grandfather to two young boys. In his spare time, he trains for and competes in triathlons and other races. Now settling into the Cape Region, he is searching out hilly trails and roads with wide shoulders. He is a fan of St. Bonaventure sports, especially rugby and basketball, as well as following the Mets, Steelers and Celtics.
