Today’s health system CEOs are focused on improving access to care, cultivating a positive team culture and ensuring continuous improvement.
In recent conversations with Becker’s, six health system CEOs shared the one strategy they would share with other leaders.
1. Timothy Pehrson. President and CEO of Oklahoma City-based Integris Health: Implement a continuous improvement operating system.
“It’s been remarkable, because it’s helped us accelerate all the other strategies, initiatives, [key performance indicators] and goals in a rapid fashion. If you look at our caregiver engagement when I arrived, it was in the 36th percentile nationally. It’s now 93rd percentile nationally. We’ve implemented nearly 100,000 caregiver ideas. They know how best to improve the work, so we just naturally became better, and they felt engaged because we trusted and believed in them. We knew that they could do it and that if we created a framework for them to win, they’d be able to win.”
2. Robert Brenner, MD. President and CEO of Paramus, N.J.-based Valley Health System: Defer to the expertise of the team.
“What’s so important is to build trust and invest in your team, stay grounded and defer to the expertise of the team around you. Although you have a title that you could say, ‘I’m the one to make that decision,’ I make decisions with the people around me. There’s some times where I’ll make unilateral decisions, but that’s very rare. … I’m encouraging the dissent of the team, and I also really try to allow myself to be authentic, and at times you have to show your vulnerability, because we’re all people in this, and we’re all trying to do the right thing — and the trust goes both ways.”
3. Mark Clement. President and CEO of Cincinnati-based TriHealth: Build the right culture.
“It requires intentionality, leadership and focus, but a highly engaged culture produces multiple benefits. It enables an organization to overcome virtually any challenge that it’s facing externally or internally and to more successfully execute its strategy. … We don’t really measure team employee satisfaction anymore — we measure engagement. Engagement is the degree to which an individual team member will commit their discretionary efforts to support the organization’s goals and vision. That’s more than just punching a clock and showing up for eight hours. It’s coming to work every day saying, ‘I’m going to do my part in helping TriHealth to achieve industry-leading performance for those we serve.'”
4. Rishi Sikka, MD. CEO of Albuquerque, N.M.-based Presbyterian Healthcare Services: Anchor probability-based decisions in values.
“The decisions you make as a CEO should be the hard ones. The easier decisions should be made closer to where their impact will be felt. Those harder decisions, in my mind, are probability-based decisions: if you do A, there’s a probability of X, Y, Z; if you do B, then there’s a different probability of X, Y, Z. At Presbyterian, those are anchored in values — specifically, what’s in the best interest of patients and people. Even if things don’t turn out exactly as you thought — and if they don’t, you need to rebound and course correct — if you can say that you anchored that decision on values, it’s really hard to fault the outcome that occurs.”
5. Rod Hanners. CEO of Keck Medicine of USC in Los Angeles: Create a high-trust environment.
“Culture is referenced a lot in leadership conversations, such as the age-old adage that ‘culture eats strategy for lunch,’ but I am not sure leaders fully embrace how important their culture is in attaining desired results. Yet, culture drives everything. At Keck Medicine, we promote a culture of compassion, collaboration, respect, forgiveness and continual improvement — all leading to a high-trust environment. This culture not only translates into a positive work environment but has a direct impact on business success, whether patient satisfaction, quality or fiscal performance.”
6. Michael Young. President and CEO of Philadelphia-based Temple Health: Keep it simple for the patient.
“We have to remember that not all of our patients are digital wonders. They might not understand healthcare, so what do we do to make it easier and more coordinated? We particularly focus on that in our cancer center, Fox Chase. We’ve seen tremendous volume growth and patient appreciation because of a much stronger navigation program there. But ease of access is something we need to focus more on.”
