Dr. Susan Scanlon
Name: Susan Scanlon, MD
Title/Company: President and Chairman of the Board, Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare. Illinois Medical Director, 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 a lawyer in Chicago. My oldest daughter has her Masters in accounting and works in auditing at Deloitte. My youngest daughter works in research at Northwestern as a clinical trial coordinator in the Department of Dermatology. He 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. He currently lives in Chicago.
Q: Describe your company.
Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare (MCWHC) is Illinois' largest private OB/GYN specialty practice. With 19 offices (eight in the northwest suburbs) and 88 physician/nurse staff, 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 managed services organization for OB/GYN groups nationwide, to expand our operations, help with capital for growth, compete with large health systems, and maintain a strong private practice for next years.
Our philosophy is to provide exceptional personalized healthcare to women, and our partnership with Unified gives our organization additional health management resources and a stronger operational backbone, allowing us to advance our mission by focusing on our number one concern – the our patients.
As a founding member of the US Women's Health Alliance (USWHA), the Midwest Center for Women's Healthcare is committed to health care reforms that establish fair business practices, improve patient outcomes, increase the quality of patient care, and reduce health care costs.
Q: Are you planning to hire additional staff or make significant capital investments in your company in the next year?
We are committed to growth. Three established private OB-GYN practices in the Chicago area have joined MCWHC in 2023 and will be coming to our platform in the next three months. This resulted in a 76% increase in providers from 50 to 88 in less than a year. We are hiring additional physicians at five of our care center locations, adding two additional mammography suites, planning to expand our laboratory services, and continuing to add more medical practices to MCWHC through mergers and acquisitions.
We want to ensure that women in communities across Illinois have affordable access to excellent medical care. Medical care through private practitioners is typically less expensive than through hospital-based systems, and MCWHC is leading the way in Illinois to provide more affordable care for women.
Q: What will be your company's main challenges in the coming year?
As healthcare costs rise for patients, I am committed to encouraging payers to add value-based models as a way to lower healthcare costs while improving patient satisfaction and outcomes as well as physician compensation. Negotiating new payer contracts with major insurance companies is a challenge for medical practices. By increasing our size, we have additional leverage to negotiate fair compensation for the great work our doctors do.
Q: What is the hottest trend in your industry?
FemTech is the hottest trend in women's healthcare. FemTech is a subsector of healthcare technology that focuses on women's health, including products, software, diagnostics and services. It is exciting to see how many private organizations are investing in innovation in women's health. I recently 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 women's health innovators. FemTech is expected to continue to grow into a billion dollar industry over the next several years.
Q: If you had one piece of advice to give a rookie executive, what would it be?
Good communication and transparency are essential to gaining and maintaining trust with the people in your organization. Making phone calls to colleagues, rather than strictly texting and emailing, goes a long way toward building relationships, improving understanding, and leveraging those talents within your organization.
Q: Do you have a business mantra?
I have two business mantras. It's actually a life mantra for me, and I've passed both on to my kids.
“Finish strong.” Anyone can start something. It's hard to take a project all the way through with persistence.
“It's all in the details.” Details are the difference between good and great.
Q: From a business perspective, who do you look out for?
There are a few people I look up to in the business. Each one is a strong woman who makes a significant contribution to our organization. Kate Schraeder, our practice communications director, for her strength in patient-centered marketing. Heidi Spears, senior vice president of Unified, for her exceptional analytical skills and impeccable demeanor. and Harriet Booker, president of Unified Women's Healthcare, for her business knowledge and broad experience.
Q: What is an interesting fact about you or your company that most people might not know?
I am the third generation of doctors in my family. Being a doctor and surgeon is a real privilege and helping my patients has brought me great personal happiness. Having started my own practice years ago gave me the autonomy I needed to raise my family while advancing 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 in 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 is possible.
I followed my father's philosophy in my career and wrote a guide for college women, led a medical mission to Ecuador, incorporated robotics into my medical practice, and led an M&A deal as president and chairman of the board of MCWHC.
Q: Was there ever a time in your career that didn't go as planned? What lesson did you learn from this?
My passion for caring for the next generation led me to write a guide for college women titled, “The Gyne's Guide for College Women: How to Have a Healthy, Safe and Happy Four Years.” To publish the book, I hired someone to edit and format the book. Unfortunately, the technology used by the young editor was outdated, resulting in a significant time delay and the need to redo the work. This was a disappointment and a reminder of the fast-paced ever-changing technology we have access to today, and that every company must frequently re-evaluate their technology platforms to stay current and effective.
Q: What do you like to do in your spare time?
I have been playing the piano most of my life. I have focused on classical music for years and recently expanded into playing jazz. One of the items on my bucket list 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 Chicago's The Field Museum, I am intrigued by the great history of this famous museum. Board membership helps fulfill my passions for both science and philanthropy.
Q: What keeps you up at night?
It is important to me that the doctors and nurses at MCWHC have a thriving private practice for many years to come. Therefore, at night when it is quiet, I think about MCWHC and all that we have done and all that we have yet to do. I am thinking of ways to perfect our processes, expand our services and involve young doctors in our business.
Q: If you weren't doing this job, what do you think you would be doing?
As a member of the US Women's Health Alliance (USWHA) Advocacy Group, I recently had the opportunity to travel to Capitol Hill to advocate for private practice. It was an exciting and empowering experience. I think being a lobbyist would be a rewarding and exciting job. I also believe it would be beneficial if more physicians were involved in advocating for patients and practices 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's name on a sports field, 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 concert. It would also be exciting to connect with the soccer stadium currently under construction in Kansas City because it is the first stadium in the world to be 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 the Cleveland Clinic and Menopause Society for the latest developments and insights on women's health. An excellent follow-up to X is the Joffrey Ballet, one of the world's leading dance companies. If you haven't been to the ballet in a while, it's a great artistic experience for a fun night out in Chicago.
