Who Wants to Be a Hospital CEO?

It's almost too much to digest, and it's certainly a long way from the old model, which paid you a certain amount for installing a new hip, for example, whether the patient did well or not.

I understand why you're under so much pressure, and to be sure, your salary in relation to mine reflects that, but I also don't want your job of figuring out how that calculus works.


Pervasive Uncertainty
Despite all the efforts to date, the disparity between growth of healthcare costs (about 6%) and economic growth (about 2.5%) is still expanding. Who's the most visible center on which all of that pressure rests? You.

This week I talked with Paul Keckley, the executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions and co-author of the note I referenced previously. We chatted primarily about a completely different topic, but we got to talking about his recent project, which included in-depth interviews with 25 CEOs from a range of hospitals and systems across the country. The main theme: uncertainty.

You know you have to change your business fundamentally, based on how you're going to be reimbursed in the future. The worst part: No one really knows what that reimbursement scheme will ultimately look like, or even if there ever will again truly be a system that you might hate (fee-for-service) but can count on for its structural rigidity.