AtlantiCare unveils Vision 2030

AtlantiCare’s six-year plan: medical school, major expansion, improving lives, strategic partnerships, becoming $2 billion institution

ATLANTIC CITY — AtlantiCare President and CEO Michael J. Charlton unveiled the 6,500-employee institution’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategic plan Wednesday, April 10, intending to be a national leader in the way health care is delivered while pledging to improve the lives of those most at risk right at home.

Speaking before a crowd of nearly 300 invited guests in the Adrian Phillips Theater at Jim Whelan Boardwalk Hall, Charlton talked about the four “strategic pillars” in Vision 2030, expanding its market share to become a $2 billion organization and announcing partnerships with the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute, the Drexel University College of Medicine, the Global Neurosciences Institute and Oracle Health.

After a video message of support from Gov. Phil Murphy and an introduction by David Goddard, chairman of the AtlantiCare Board of Trustees, Charlton launched into a lengthy presentation that included chats with leaders from the partner organizations, Stockton University President Joseph Bertolino and state Sen. Vince Polistina.

“We need to be remarkable because we live in a time when new innovations in care are being pushed to market every day and if we can seize this opportunity and harness the right technologies, we have the opportunity today to transform how health care is delivered,” Chartlon said.

“Remarkable and reimagined. That’s Vision 2030,” he added.

Charlton said all health systems are facing challenges, but the circumstances don’t change AtlantiCare’s responsibility. 

“We as organizations in this community need to be done partially solving problems. If we’re going to be so bold as to think we can reimagine and transform health care, we must be willing to adapt to new ways of doing things,” he said.

If AtlantiCare can “dare to be different,” it can be “the change that health care needs,” Charlton said.

The CEO said he challenged his organization to understand its obligation to the community and to overcome the perception “that great care can only be delivered in Philly.”

Building toward “a massive transformation,” he said to achieve great things, they have to take “bold chances.”

Charlton then launched into the four pillars — serving the community, workplace excellence, accelerating transformation and growing market share.

“These pillars are our north star,” he said. And serving the community “is why we exist.”

Serving the community

He said care must not remain within the four walls, but must extend out into the community to improve conditions, which will in turn improve health outcomes.

“The social determinants of health influence not only life expectancy, but also the quality of the years, essentials like food, housing, transportation. They are all basic needs that are often overlooked and taken for granted,” Charlton said.

To that end, he said AtlantiCare is committed to solving the problems to determine the future success of the community. 

Under Vision 2030, AtlantiCare wants to reduce food insecurity, advance maternal health, build healthy schools and champion housing solutions.

“Our aspiration is to solve the housing crisis in Atlantic City” and create generational wealth to break the cycle that exists now, Charlton said. 

On nutrition, he said simply eating well can prevent health issues, but Atlantic City is one of 50 food deserts in New Jersey. AtlantiCare is working to change that.

“You may ask, why would a health system be involved with a grocery store?” but access to healthy food is related to patient outcomes, he explained. 

AtlantiCare already has begun work to improve access to mental health care. 

Charlton said the health status of Atlantic County is 18th out of New Jersey’s 21 counties — HIV, smoking, premature death, obesity, low birth weights are all above state average.

“Residents of Atlantic County have a 4.7-year decrease in life expectancy and if you live in … Atlantic City, it’s even worse,” he said. By 2030, AtlantiCare will change that with existing programs and new initiatives to reach the goal of reducing food insecurity by 6 percent, reducing unsheltered homelessness by 20 percent and increasing life expectancy by five years.

Workplace excellence, a medical school in Atlantic City

“We want to be nationally recognized as the employer of choice,” Charlton said, making AtlantiCare where “the best and brightest” are educated, and come to the region to live, work and play. 

To do that, AtlantiCare will advance “a culture of continuous learning empowerment, innovation and adaptiveness.”

There are two key initiatives to achieve this. The first is AtlantiCare Youniversity, something that “speaks to the needs of this community” with programs that go beyond the classroom to give students hands-on experience. Charlton said AtlantiCare will pay for its students’ education and compensate them for work they perform during it.

This year AtlantiCare is launching eight new programs spanning medical assistants to pharmacy techs, radiology techs to billing and coding.

“We don’t just want to provide jobs,” he said. “We want to build careers.”

He said the current medical residency program trains more than 100 students annually, then he announced AtlantiCare’s plans to build its own medical school in Atlantic City. 

He said AtlantiCare entered into a clinical affiliation with the Drexel University College of Medicine. It will provide clinical training for third- and fourth-year medical students at AtlantiCare’s facilities.

At that point Charlton invited to the stage Stockton’s Bertolino, Sen. Polistina and Charles Cairns, MD, the Walter and Leonard Annenberg dean of Drexel’s College of Medicine and vice president of medical affairs for the university.

Polistina said he was excited about the prospect of not only having AtlantiCare training people, but getting them to stay there. “That’s what it’s all about for me … how to improve opportunities for people in Atlantic County.”

Charlton noted Drexel is the largest private medical school in the country, training one out of every 75 physicians in the U.S.

“The things that drew us to Atlantic City are the things that have driven our transformation in communities across Pennsylvania, as well as in California, North Carolina, Delaware,” Cairns said. “That is to really take up the challenges of those who are either underserved by health care or underrepresented in the innovation that is health care — the new discoveries, the new technologies, the new care models ….”

“Clearly Atlantic City is one of those areas where we have an extraordinary health care system,” he said, congratulating AtlantiCare not only for its national accolades, but also taking on the challenges within the community. 

Cairns noted how its branch campus in Reading, Pa., opened just over three years ago, is helping transform that economically embattled community.

Bertolino said AtlantiCare and Stockton University are interconnected in many ways. 

“It’s important to remember that AtlantiCare and Stockton occupy the same space,” he said. “Your main campus, our main campus I think makes us interconnected as partners in a way that other colleges and universities around the country may not have at their disposal.”

Bertolino said he wants to make sure they build on the partnership and because Stockton is a public regional institution, “we have a moral responsibility to be in and of the community and to care for the community and serve the community in which we live. This partnership provides that opportunity.”

Growing market share

Charlton said Vision 2030 expects investing $1 billion “in the communities we serve.” That includes building an academic medical campus in Atlantic City and a “substantial” mixed-used development that “will raise all boats,” helping the underserved.

Vision 2030 puts growth of the mainland campus “on steroids,” transforming it into a “medical city” by adding thousands of jobs, he said.

“If we reimagine the campus with new facilities and we bring together innovative technologies in care concepts, we transform how health care is being delivered,” Charlton said.

The expansion will include a new state-of-the-art emergency department and imaging center, a new cardiac tower for its award-winning cardiac program and a partnership with Cleveland Clinic Cancer Institute, which is “renowned for its expertise” in cancer treatment and therapies. That partnership will give southeastern New Jersey residents streamlined access to national experts.

Charlton also said AtlantiCare is one of the first-named innovation partners for Oracle Health’s new generative AI-based Oracle Clinical Assistant, allowing providers to use voice commands with technology to give them more patient interaction time, and will work with Oracle on a Comprehensive Command Center that provides “near-real-time enterprise transparency,” helping the network perform at peak efficiency to improve care delivery.”

For this and other plans in the expansion under Vision 2030, the overriding concept is that local people don’t have to travel far for quality care.

“Our goal is to become a destination for care where others choose AtlantiCare and they come here,” he said.  

AtlantiCare also has entered a clinical partnership with Global Neurosciences Institute (GNI), which will boost what the institution already offers for neurosurgical procedures and neurology services related to Alzheimer’s, cognitive disorders, Parkinson’s disease/movement disorders, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and others, according to information provided after the program.

To discuss the partnerships and affiliations, Charlton also invited to the stage Dr. Erol Veznedaroglu, founder and president/CEO of GNI, the Robert A. Groff Chair Department of Neurosurgery at Drexel’s College of Medicine; Dr. Hetty Carraway, vice chair of strategy and development, director of the Leukemia Program and professor of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine; and Mike Sicilia, executive vice president of Oracle Global Industries. 

Under the pillar of growing AtlantiCare’s market share, Charlton said he was confident they could reach the goals including becoming a $2 billion organization, expanding market share by 5 percent and enhancing services and expanding access for behavioral health, cardiology, neurosciences, oncology and orthopedics and expanding the emergency department.

Charlton said it will take every one of the more than 6,500 AtlantiCare team members to make Vision 2030 real.

Concluding the event to loud applause, Charlton said 2030 seems far away, “but six years will go by in an instant. What I hope you saw today, what I hope you felt today, is that AtlantiCare is done following health care trends and we are going to transform and set the trends moving forward.”

The AtlantiCare president closed by saying he grew up in Atlantic City “so I know how exceptionally difficult it can be to get things done in this region and especially this community.”

He noted it is easy to overlook having great health care in the community, but people should be comforted knowing when challenges arise that AtlantiCare is there.

“I firmly believe care is only great when it’s close to home. You don’t need to go to Philly. I’ll say that again. You don’t need to go to Philly for excellence,” Charlton emphasized. “AtlantiCare is committed to being the premier destination for care and I hope you walk away today sharing my optimism and my excitement for the vision of a healthier future for all.”

Michael Charlton/AtlantiCare

He was officially appointed president and CEO of AtlantiCare Oct. 1, 2023, after being interim president since June 1 of last year. He was a Board of Trustees member for 15 years, seven as board chair. He has a bachelor’s degree in health care administration and organizational leadership from the University of Louisville and a master’s degree in health care leadership from Brown University.

AtlantiCare has more than 100 locations in Atlantic, Cape May, Burlington, Camden and Ocean counties and services a region of more than 1 million residents. It has been recognized with multiple awards including being one of the 17 recipients of the Malcolm Aldridge National Quality Award, the highest honor for performance excellent granted by the U.S. government.

– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff