Staffing is collapsing, risk is rising, and clinical leaders are on the hook. Patient safety demands bold workflows, tech-enabled care, and the courage to rethink everything. Fast.
Welcome to the HealthLeaders June 2025 cover story. Each month, our editors dive into the topics that matter most—such as healthcare innovation, leadership strategies, and patient care—delivered in a dynamic, engaging format.
This month, it's all about clinical leadership.
Nobody says it out loud, but in hospital C-suites across the country, the message is clear: if something in the clinical space goes wrong, clinical leadership is on the hook.
As care teams shrink and patient acuity rises, the safety net is fraying, and patients are slipping through. Virtual nurses, AI scribes, cross-trained teams, and reimagined care environments are no longer innovative, they’re triage.
CMOs and other clinical leaders must walk a tightrope between fiscal responsibility and clinical reality, knowing that when the inevitable safety incident occurs, accountability stops at their desk.
But what if the real crisis isn’t the staffing shortage itself, but the belief that the work must be done the same way it always has been?
In this cover story, our CMO editor Chris Cheney shows clinical leaders how to lead the charge on change.
Read the full story here.
“It’s going to get worse—we are never going to have enough [staff]. In fact, it does not matter how good we are at recruiting people—we are never going to have enough people if we continue to work the way we are working now.”
Syl Trepanier, DNP, RN, chief nursing officer at Providence.
Amanda Norris is the Director of Content for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The number one strategy to maintain patient safety when there are workforce shortages is to put processes in place and establish new workflows to ensure that staff can be successful.
Technological solutions such as virtual nursing can relieve burdens on staff who are working in an area experiencing workforce shortages.
Provider-patient ratios are set with input from human resources and the finance team, and a CMO needs to serve as a clinical staff advocate to make sure provider-patient ratios do not compromise quality or patient safety.