BEAVER CREEK, Colo.—Twelve features define a successful service line, Suzette Jaskie, president and CEO of MedAxiom Consulting, said June 18 at the MedAxiom Cardiovascular Service Line Symposium in Beaver Creek, Colo. “I will tell you up front that no one place is doing all of them.”

Topping the list is having a shared vision. Cardiovascular service lines are disruptive, she posited. “We all understand and have worked through many clinical disruptions,” with game-changing technologies, for instance. “Service lines are organizationally disruptive. The service line challenges every way that we work and are organized.”

Leadership ranked in second place. To succeed, the service line needs the buy-in of senior and management executives who will remove barriers and support its causes. Third place went to a healthy culture, which is the execution of an entity mission, vision and strategy that places value on the whole over the individual.

A one-care delivery standard earned fourth place. “This is where we are asking physicians to get on the same page with evidence-based medicine and inform the system how we perform clinically,” she explained. “This is the challenge in my mind for physicians to bring value to our system.”

Other key elements include planning and executing across the continuum of care; data quality, transparency and analytic capability; a dyad leadership model with a physician leader and administrator; care team utilization and talent management; operations efficiency mastery and resources availability; alignment of strategy and compensation; the ability to manage costs and experiment with new payment models; and the patient experience as a strategic operations priority.

The three-day symposium is designed to provide physicians and administrators with guidance and inspiration for building robust and effective cardiovascular service lines that support continuum of care no matter what size or type of organization. Presentations touch on many of the key features on the list.