“Blue Jays” Mark Feinberg and Jim Hoelz Focus on ED Optimization

In the early 2000s, Mark Feinberg and Jim Hoelz were working on a joint project in Tampa through Cardinal Health from very different positions. Feinberg was vice president of sales for the healthcare giant; Hoelz was an experienced ER nurse in charge of operations for a consulting firm on the project. After a successful outcome was achieved, both men compared notes, surmising that if administrators had taken an extra recommended step or two, a higher rate of customer and provider satisfaction would have been ensured.

While sharing a post-project meal, both noted similarities in their work ethics and wondered if they might start their own consulting firm and focus solely on Emergency Departments (EDs).

“We believed that even though we were successful with the Cardinal project, we could’ve done better outside the constraints of a healthcare system,” said Hoelz.

Yet because their personalities were very dissimilar, they shared slight reservations about working together effectively.

“Jim and I have very little in common,” said Feinberg. “It’s kind of a running joke that we’re like Laurel and Hardy or Oscar and Felix.”

Because their values were aligned, neither expressed much concern about collaborating woes.

“We both bring different views, backgrounds and skill sets to the table,” said Hoelz. “We realized that what we lacked in ourselves, we found in each other and made very good partners.”

They established Blue Jay Consulting in Orlando in 2006, naming the firm after the school mascot for Johns Hopkins University, where Feinberg completed graduate school and Hoelz earned his nursing degree. Their work began with Bon Secours Maryview Medical Center in Portsmouth, Va.

“The consulting team … had the skills and expertise to hit the ground running, forging excellent relationships and effecting change within a short time frame,” said Susan Macleod, Maryview’s executive vice president. “Physicians and nurses responded to their leadership, passion for change, and patient focus. We’re very pleased with their ability to fit within our system and the results we’ve achieved.”
Now known nationwide for their optimization skills, hospitals often contact Blue Jay to relieve their overburdened EDs, reduce the walk-out rates and boost patients’ overall experience. Some system improvements have shifted cardiac patients from the ED to higher-level and continued care, therefore decompressing the ED and increasing its capacity.

“Our job is simple: to help make an emergency department the best it can be,” said Feinberg, managing director of Blue Jay Consulting. “Sometimes, it's a relatively straightforward task; other times, we face a complex array of problems that require a multi-tiered, long-term set of solutions. But we believe strongly that we’re the best at what we do, that we harness the strength of the most experienced emergency care professionals in the country and that we’re the most qualified strategic partner for any ED.”

Hoelz, RN, chief nurse executive and also managing partner for Blue Jay Consulting, has assessed 65 to 70 EDs around the country since the firm was established. “Time and again, people become so fixated on how things have been done before that they get stuck,” he said.

For example, Feinberg said, “we’re working in a hospital system where we’d talked to administrators for a long time about coming to help them. They weren’t quite sure they needed help. They may have been a little proud and said they had everything under control. After a wake-up call, when a patient died in their ER waiting room, they decided it was time to do something.”

Hoelz and Feinberg found the length of time for patients to be seen was “off the chart high,” said Hoelz, but added that patient satisfaction was low. “We’re providing implementation services in the ED to make improvements,” added Feinberg. “There’s no black box or methodology. What we do isn’t really that complicated.”

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