March 5, 2002

Dear Colleagues:

The Hunter Group recently completed an engagement at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center to develop a management tool – consisting of indicators – that would alert a medical center sooner rather than later of risks and opportunities. The concept is that such data would serve as a warning system and enable a medical center to respond earlier to problem areas in its clinical operations or take advantage of special opportunities that may present themselves in this rapidly-changing health care environment.

Bayview agreed to participate as a Beta site for The Hunter Group. Now the team from The Hunter Group will be at The Johns Hopkins Hospital for eight weeks, starting April 1, to test the tool further. This additional pilot site experience will allow them to enhance their early warning assessment model for academic medical centers.

As part of the effort, we’ve asked the team to look, in particular, at two critical factors:

1. What margin requirements do we need to maintain our mission and quality and make essential investments in the clinical infrastructure?
2. What are the major opportunities and risks associated with the operation of this clinical enterprise and what are recommended priority actions?

The project leader for Hunter is Bill Kerr, a very senior and respected health care executive with many years of experience in academic medical centers. You may be hearing from him and members of his team. Please give them any assistance requested.

Sincerely,

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