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Top 5 CMO Stories of 2024

Analysis  |  By Christopher Cheney  
   December 25, 2024

The stories explored new CMOs appointed in 2024, anesthesia staff shortages, patient experience versus customer experience, value-based contracts, and the need for APP executive leadership.

These five stories from HealthLeaders touched upon the top executives and pivotal issues of the year.

1. 7 CMOs to Watch in 2025

Chris Frost, MD, is senior vice president, CMO, and chief quality officer of Lifepoint Health. Frost was named senior vice president, CMO, and chief quality officer of Lifepoint in July. He has served in two other leadership roles at the Brentwood, Tennessee-based health system: chief medical officer of Lifepoint Communities and national medical director of hospital-based services.

Joseph Galante, MD, is CMO of UC Davis Medical Center. Galante was named CMO of the Sacramento, California-based academic medical center in July. He had served as interim CMO for a year and was the hospital’s trauma medical director for many years.

Cameron Mantor, MD, MHA, is chief physician executive at OU Health and president of OU Health Partners. In September, Mantor was named chief physician executive at the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma-based academic health system and president of OU Health Partners, the health system's physician practice. He had been serving in the roles on an interim basis since January.

Thomas McGinn, MD, MPH, is senior executive vice president and chief physician executive officer of CommonSpirit Health. McGinn was appointed senior executive vice president and chief physician executive officer of the Chicago-based health system in September. He joined the health system in 2021 as executive vice president for physician enterprise.

Arthur Pancioli, MD, is senior vice president and chief clinical officer of UC Health. Pancioli assumed the role of senior vice president and chief clinical officer at the Cincinnati-based academic health system in August. Prior to taking on his new position, he was chief transformation officer of the health system.

Tipu Puri, MD, PhD, is CMO of University of Chicago Medical Center. Puri was appointed CMO of the Chicago-based academic medical center in September. He joined UChicago Medicine as an internal medicine resident in 1999 and has held several physician leadership roles, most recently associate CMO.

Scott Schissel, MD, PhD, is CMO of Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. Schissel became CMO of the 665-bed academic medical center, which is operated by RWJBarnabas Health, in August. He had been CMO and vice president of medical affairs at Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital in Boston, where he also served as associate CMO and chief of medicine.

2. How CMOs Can Battle the Anesthesia Staff Shortage

The country is grappling with a critical shortage of anesthesia staff, and several steps need to be taken to address the problem.

An article published in the journal Anesthesiology detailed the extent of the anesthesia staff shortage and offered solutions to rise to the challenge. According to the article, before the coronavirus pandemic, 35% of healthcare facilities reported an anesthesia staff shortage. Two years after the pandemic, the percentage of healthcare facilities reporting an anesthesia staff shortage rose to 78%, the article says.

"For me, the biggest challenge of the anesthesiologist shortage is patient safety," says Gulshan Sharma, MD, MPH, senior vice president and chief medical and innovation officer at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. "It's a different ballgame when you are putting a patient under anesthesia. You want to make sure you have a talented team of anesthesia professionals who can help manage the patient."

3. The Difference Between Patient Experience and Customer Experience, and Why It Matters

Healthcare organizations need to focus on both the patient experience and the customer experience. And yes, there are important differences.

The contrast between patient experience and customer experience is largely a difference in perspective, says Sarah Way, MD, JD, chief quality and medical officer at Texas Health Dallas, a hospital operated by Texas Health Resources.

Patient experience is related to when someone receives medical care in the moment, says Way, an emergency medicine physician. For example, receiving treatment from an emergency room clinician is a patient experience.

"A customer experience is when you look at an interaction more broadly, when somebody is engaging with the healthcare system, but it is not the provision of medical care in the moment," Way says. "In the emergency department, customer experience includes how somebody is checked in at the front desk and how they are discharged."

4. Why Primary Care Providers Are Failing With Value-Based Contracts

Research conducted at the Providence health system shows primary care physicians are overwhelmed with quality measures in value-based contracts.

One of the primary criticisms of payers' value-based contracts is that there is little to no coordination of quality measures for which clinicians are held accountable. In addition, value-based contracts have been adopted for quality improvement in primary care despite mixed evidence of their positive impact.

research letter published by JAMA Health Forum found that primary care providers at Providence have been saddled with an overwhelming number of quality measures in value-based contracts. The research features data collected from more than 800 primary care providers from 2020 to 2022.

The senior author of the research letter told HealthLeaders that the study's findings were unexpected.

"We were shocked by what we found," said Ari Robicsek, MD, chief analytics and research officer at Providence. "Effectively, the level of industry disorganization leads to a situation where individual physicians have way more quality metrics than they can possibly be expected to manage."

5. Why the Growing Role of APPs Creates Need for Executive Leadership

A growing number of health systems and hospitals have been creating APP executive positions, including Vanderbilt University HospitalCommonSpirit Health, and Corewell Health. The new executive positions recognize the crucial role that APPs are playing in healthcare.

Add Cleveland Clinic to that list.

Cleveland Clinic has been using APPs, such as nurse practitioners and physician assistants for decades. Over the past 25 years, the number of APPs has grown significantly from about 400 to nearly 4,000.

The health system decided to create an executive position to improve the management of APPs at the health system, says Melissa Stoudmire, MSN, who became Cleveland Clinic’s first vice president of APPs in August.

"The organization identified the need to create a dedicated enterprise APP role to manage continued growth in APPs, maintain consistency in APP practice, and streamline the leadership structure," she says. "The health system wanted to give the APP group an executive presence."

Christopher Cheney is the CMO editor at HealthLeaders.


KEY TAKEAWAYS

Before the coronavirus pandemic, 35% of healthcare facilities reported an anesthesia staff shortage. Two years after the pandemic, the percentage of healthcare facilities reporting an anesthesia staff shortage rose to 78%.

Patient experience is related to when someone receives medical care in the moment. A customer experience is when you look at an interaction more broadly, when somebody is engaging with the healthcare system, but it is not the provision of medical care in the moment.

A growing number of health systems and hospitals have been creating APP executive positions, including Vanderbilt University Hospital, Commonspirit Health, and Corewell Health. The new executive positions recognize the crucial role that APPs are playing in healthcare.


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