Coffee Break: Dr. Susan Scanlon, Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare
Name: Susan Scanlon, MD
Title/company: President and board chair, Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare; Medical director of Illinois, Unified Women's Healthcare
Address: 2801 Lakeside Drive, Suite 209, Bannockburn
Phone: (847) 884-9800
Website: mcwhc.com; scanlonworks.com
Industry: Women's health care
Annual revenue: $40 million
Number of employees: 228
Age: 59
Family life: My son is an attorney in litigation in Chicago. My oldest daughter has her master's degree in accounting and works in audit at Deloitte. My younger daughter works in research at Northwestern as clinical coordinator of clinical trials in the Department of Dermatology. Grew up in Glen Ellyn. Lived in Arlington Heights for 25 years. Seeing patients in the Arlington Heights and Hoffman Estates locations for 23 years. Currently live in Chicago.
Q: Describe your company.
Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare (MCWHC) is Illinois's largest single specialty OB/GYN private practice. With 19 office locations (eight in the Northwest suburbs) and 88 doctors/nurse practitioners, we offer state-of-the-art medical care to more than 175,000 patients in Illinois. We recently partnered with Unified Women's Healthcare, the largest Management Services Organization for OB/GYN groups nationally, to expand our operations, assist with capital for growth, compete with large health systems and maintain a strong private practice for years to come.
Our cornerstone philosophy is to provide exceptional individualized health care to women, and our partnership with Unified offers our organization additional health management resources and a stronger operational backbone, allowing us to further our mission while focusing on our number one concern - our patients.
As a founding member of the US Women's Health Alliance (USWHA), Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare is committed to health care reforms that establish fair business practices, improve patient outcomes, increase quality of patient care and reduce health care costs.
Q: Do you plan to hire any additional staff or make any significant capital investments in your company in the next year?
We are committed to growth. Three well-established Chicago-area private OB-GYN practices have joined MCWHC in 2023 and are coming onto our platform in the next three months. This has resulted in a 76% growth in providers from 50 to 88 in less than a year. We are hiring additional physicians in five of our care center locations, adding two additional mammography suites, planning to expand our laboratory services, and continuing to add more physician practices to MCWHC through mergers and acquisitions.
We want to ensure that women in communities across Illinois have affordable access to great medical care. Medical care through private practice physicians is typically less expensive than through hospital-based systems, and MCWHC is taking the lead in Illinois to provide more affordable care to women.
Q: What will your company's main challenges be in the next year?
As health care costs increase for patients, I am committed to encouraging payers to add value-based models as a way to bring down the cost of health care, while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes as well as physician reimbursement. Negotiating new payer contracts with the major insurance companies is a challenge for physician practices. By increasing our size, we have additional leverage to negotiate fair reimbursement for the excellent work our physicians are doing.
Q: What's the hottest trend in your industry?
FemTech is the hottest trend in women's health care. FemTech is a subsector of health care technology that focuses on women's health, including products, software, diagnostics and services. It's exciting to see how many private organizations are investing in innovation in the women's health sector. Recently, I had the opportunity to meet with Maneesha Ghiya and Sara Crown Starr from FemHealth Ventures and was inspired by their unique approach to investing in innovators in women's health. It is anticipated that FemTech will continue to grow into a billion-dollar industry in the next several years.
Q: If you had one tip to give to a rookie executive, what would it be?
Good communication and transparency are essential for gaining and maintaining trust with the people in your organization. Making phone calls to colleagues, rather than strictly using text and email correspondence, goes a long way to building relationships, improving understanding, and leveraging the talents of those within your organization.
Q: Do you have a business mantra?
I have two business mantras. They are actually life mantras for me, both of which I've passed onto my kids.
"Finish strong." Anyone can start something. It's difficult to carry a project all the way through with tenacity.
"It's all in the details." The details are the difference between good and great.
Q: From a business outlook, whom do you look up to?
There are a few people I look up to in business. Each is a strong woman who contributes significantly to our organization. Kate Schraeder, our director of practice communications, for her strength in patient-focused marketing; Heidi Spears, senior vice president of Unified, for her excellent analytical skills and unflappable demeanor; and Harriet Booker, president of Unified Women's Healthcare, for her business insights and broad experience.
Q: What is one interesting fact about you or your company that most people may not know?
I am the third generation of physicians in my family. Being a physician and surgeon is a true privilege, and helping my patients has brought me much personal happiness. Having started my own practice years ago has given me the autonomy that I needed to raise my family while forging ahead with my career.
My father, Dr. Patrick J. Scanlon, was the chief of cardiology at Loyola Stritch School of Medicine in Chicago and was named one of the 10 Pioneers of Cardiology by the Society of Interventional Cardiology. He was an innovator and encouraged me to always think beyond just being a doctor, to do more than I think possible.
I embraced my father's philosophy in my career and wrote a guidebook for college women, led a medical mission in Ecuador, incorporated robotics into my medical practice, and led a mergers and acquisitions deal as the president and board chair of MCWHC.
Q: Was there a moment in your career that didn't go as you had planned? What lesson did you learn from it?
My passion for caring for the next generation led me to write a guidebook for college women titled, "The Gyne's Guide for College Women: How to Have a Healthy, Safe and Happy Four Years." In order to publish the book, I hired someone to edit and format the book. Unfortunately, the technology being used by the young editor was outdated, resulting in a significant setback in time and a need to redo the work. That was a disappointment and a reminder of the fast-paced ever-changing technology we have access to today, and that every company needs to reassess their technology platforms frequently to stay current and efficient.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time?
I have been playing the piano most of my life. I have focused on classical music for years and recently have expanded to playing jazz. One of my bucket list items is to play a jazz set one night in Chicago.
Q: What book is on your nightstand?
"The Marshall Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty" by John Tebbel.
As a member of the Women's Board of The Field Museum of Chicago, I'm intrigued by the great history of this prestigious museum. Participating on the board helps fulfill my passions for both science and philanthropy.
Q: What keeps you up at night?
It's important to me that the doctors and nurse practitioners in MCWHC have a thriving private practice for many years to come. Therefore, at night when's its quiet, I think about MCWHC and all that we have done and all that we still have to do. I think about ways to fine-tune our processes, expand our services, and engage the young doctors in our business.
Q: If you were not doing this job, what do you think you would be doing?
As a member of the US Women's Health Alliance (USWHA) Advocacy Team, I recently had the opportunity to travel to Capitol Hill to advocate for private practice. It was an exhilarating and empowering experience. I think being a lobbyist would be a rewarding and exciting job. I also think it would be beneficial if more doctors became involved in patient and practice advocacy in Washington.
Q: What was your first paying job?
My first paying job was at Brown's Chicken in high school. I learned to stay calm under pressure and the value and importance of customer service.
Q: If you could put your company name on a sports venue, which one would you choose?
The easy answer is Wrigley Field because it is such a fun and beautiful place to see a game or a concert. It would also be exciting to be associated with the soccer stadium under construction presently in Kansas City because it's the first stadium in the world being built for a women's professional sports team.
Q: Two people to follow on X (formerly Twitter) and why.
I prefer LinkedIn and recommend following Cleveland Clinic and Menopause Society for the latest women's health care developments and insights. A great follow on X is the Joffrey Ballet, one of the premier dance companies in the world. If you haven't been to the ballet in a while, it's a wonderful artistic experience for a fun night in Chicago.