Top 10 Takeaways from the HealthLeaders Media CFO Exchange

More than three dozen top healthcare finance executives share insight and strategies for tackling their toughest business challenges.

Participants at the 2017 HealthLeaders Media CFO Exchange in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho last week said they are generally optimistic about weathering the storm of regulatory changes, new payment models, and shifting market forces buffeting their organizations.

The finance executives at the invitation-only event also shared many mutual concerns such as offsetting traditional revenue-stream declines at hospitals and assessing the appetite to adopt value-based care models in their markets.

Here are 10 of the most insightful comments from the gathered finance leaders:

1. Stephen Allegretto
Vice President of Strategic Analytics and Value Innovation
Yale-New Haven Health
New Haven, CT

"We treat about 100,000 patients a year. Seven percent of our patients have a complication or quality variation in care. Those patients stay three time longer and their costs are four times higher. As we are looking to produce value, if we can reduce that variation for those patients and improve the outcomes of those patients, we will not only improve their health, we will also improve our financial picture."

2. Mike Browning
Chief Financial Officer
ProMedica
Toledo, OH

"You have to be optimistic, because if you're not, you're just willing to fade away or settle for status quo, and those who we serve deserve more. You have to have optimism; the question is where are you going to find it?"

3. Michele Cusack
Senior Vice President of Finance
Northwell Health
Great Neck, NY

"Where we try to capitalize is on the physician alignment, not only among the employed physicians but also with voluntary providers at jointly owned ambulatory surgery centers and other partnerships to get them aligned with us. Even if they are not completely in our facilities, there is the potential for increased financial benefits and volume." 

4. Mary Ann Freas
Senior Vice President and CFO

Southwest General
Middleburg Heights, OH

"We divested our skilled nursing and some of our other less profitable programs. But what we have tried to do is build or open new programs—general psychiatry, pain management, maternity and fetal medicine; grow our strength programs—orthopedic surgery and cancer; and bring on new physicians—particularly those who have an existing patient base."

5. Scott Hawig
Chief Financial Officer
Froedtert Health
Milwaukee, WI

"The most successful initiative for us has been on the pharmacy side—both in retail pharmacy and expanding some of our mail order and specialty pharmacy. We even have a little bit of compounding and potential manufacturing."

6. Tom Lowry
Vice President of Finance
Dignity Health Provider Resources
Rancho Cordova, CA

"Finding good talent in case management for bundled payments like CJR [Medicare's Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement program] is very hard to do. It's a skill set that is not part of what they taught RNs in nursing school."

7. Christian Pass
Chief Financial Officer
John Muir Health
Walnut Creek, CA

"Sometimes we launch initiatives that are defensive in nature. It's challenging because there's always a race to have new technology and equipment. It could be a surgical robot. If someone's going to put a surgical robot near one of our facilities, and we don't put a robot in, will our surgeons will go to the competitor?" 

8. Cheryl Sadro
EVP, Chief Business and Finance Officer
University of Texas Medical Branch
Galveston, TX

"The big thing that we all have to be thinking about is how do we use traditional analysis and make sure it is going to fit in the new payment models? How do we take the traditional analytics from fee-for-service medicine and look at it from a bundled perspective? Are we really capable of handling that payment initiative?"

9. Bob Shapiro
EVP and Chief Financial Officer
Northwell Health
Great Neck, NY

"If you go into the insurance business, it can make you, or it can break you... We did not try to hit a grand slam. It was a matter of building loyalty in areas where we already had patients who were loyal to us."

10. Kyle Wilcox
Vice President of Finance and Business Development
Grinnell Regional Medical Center
Grinnell, IA

"For any of you who have small markets, I recommend a revenue cycle strategy of being nice to your patients. You will find the majority of individuals in small towns are good people who, given the chance, will pay their bills."