Federal officials have unveiled a new strategy to address rising cybersecurity incidents. It includes incentives to improve data security, beefed-up guidelines, and the potential for cuts in reimbursement.

With cybersecurity incidents occurring on an almost-daily basis in the healthcare sector, federal regulators are looking to take a more active role in improving data security.

The Health and Human Services Department has released a new strategy for cybersecurity, centered on four steps aimed at improving the healthcare landscape. The six-page document builds off of the Biden administration’s National Cybersecurity Strategy, which was unveiled last March, and follows recent actions taken by federal agencies to boost security, including the release of healthcare-specific practices and training resources, guidance on medical device security from the US Food and Drug Administration, and new telehealth guidelines from the HHS Office of Civil Rights (OCR).

“The healthcare sector is particularly vulnerable, and the stakes are especially high,” HHS Secretary Javier Becerra said in a release accompanying the strategy. “Our commitment to this work reflects that urgency and importance. HHS is working with healthcare and public health partners to bolster our cyber security capabilities nationwide.”

The information comes at a particularly vulnerable time for the healthcare industry, which has seen an alarming increase in large data breaches and ransomware attacks in recent months. According to the OCR, the industry has seen an almost two-fold increase in large breaches from 2018 to 2022, from 369 incidents to 712, while ransomware attacks have surged 278% in that time.

“Cyber incidents affecting hospitals and health systems have led to extended care disruptions caused by multi-week outages; patient diversion to other facilities; and strain on acute care provisioning and capacity, causing cancelled medical appointments, non-rendered services, and delayed medical procedures (particularly elective procedures),” the HHS report notes. “More importantly, they put patients’ safety at risk and impact local and surrounding communities that depend on the availability of the local emergency department, radiology unit, or cancer center for life-saving care.”

With that in mind, HHS is planning to take a more active role in pushing the healthcare industry to improve its defenses. The agency plans to:

1. Establish voluntary cybersecurity performance goals for the healthcare sector;
2.  Provide resources to incentivize and implement these cybersecurity practices;
3.  Implement an HHS-wide strategy to support greater enforcement and accountability; and
4.  Expand and mature the one-stop shop within HHS for healthcare sector cybersecurity.

Of particular note are the financial incentives that the government will be offering to health systems who need help becoming more secure. According to the report, the HHS will be launching a program to help struggling hospitals cover the up-front costs of installing “essential” cybersecurity performance goals (CPGs), and a program that offers incentives for hospitals to invest in advanced cybersecurity practices to implement “advanced” CPGs.

In addition, the HHS strategy will include new cybersecurity requirements for hospitals that will be enforced through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an indication that the feds could tie compliance to Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. As well, the OCR is scheduled to update the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability (HIPAA) Security Rule this coming spring to include cybersecurity requirements.

Not everyone is on board with the HHS strategy. Chris Bowen, founder and chief information security officer for ClearDATA, says the industry should get even tougher.

“While a gesture towards progress, [the strategy] falls critically short of what's imperative in today's climate,” he said in an e-mail to HealthLeaders. “Suggesting voluntary measures is akin to applying a band-aid on a hemorrhage, it's time for HHS to enforce rigorous, non-negotiable cybersecurity standards and to provide the necessary resources and mandates.”

“The sector's talent gap in cybersecurity is no secret, and it places our hospitals at a disadvantage, jeopardizing patient safety,” he adds. “We must look to the strategies of those who have robustly safeguarded healthcare data and replicate their assertive approach. Protecting lives extends beyond the physical realm; it encompasses shielding patients from the lethal threat of cyber-attacks. To accept minimum, voluntary standards is to tacitly endorse a status quo that endangers our patients.”

MIT researchers are working on an ingestible that vibrates when swallowed, tricking the stomach into thinking it’s full

Can a vibrating pill help healthcare providers create sustainable and effective weight loss treatments?

That’s the question researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to answer as they experiment with the latest in healthcare ingestibles. The MIT team has developed a pill enhanced with technology that is programmed to vibrate for about 30 minutes after being swallowed, activating receptors within the body that signal the stomach is full.

“For somebody who wants to lose weight or control their appetite, it could be taken before each meal,” Shriya Srinivasan, a former MIT graduate student and assistant professor of bioengineering at Harvard University who’s leading the study, said in an MIT news piece. “This could be really interesting in that it would provide an option that could minimize the side effects that we see with the other pharmacological treatments out there.”

[Read also: Are Ingestible Sensors Making a Comeback?]

The study, recently published in Science Advances, targets two trends in healthcare innovation that have been in the headlines lately.

Characterized by the popularity surrounding new drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, healthcare providers are looking for new ways to address obesity and weight-related issues, which play a role in many chronic health conditions. Some 42% of US adults are affected by obesity, and it’s estimated that more than 160 million Americans are on a diet at any given time and spending more than $70 billion a year on commercial weight-loss plans, supplements and other diet programs.

Yet for all the products and treatments on the market, many people struggle to consistently stay within a diet plan, primarily because habits are very hard to break. Healthcare providers have long struggled to design treatment plans that are sustainable and keep patients engaged over the long run.

Digital health tools, such as digital therapeutics, aim to tackle that challenge by targeting behavior change.

One method of tackling behavior change is by tricking the body into thinking it’s full. For Srinivasan and Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and MIT and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, that led to the creation of the VIBES pill, which vibrates in the stomach, affecting the vagus nerve, which then sends messages to the brain that the stomach is full.

Srinivasan, Traverso, and their research team tested the VIBES pill on Yorkshire pigs, who were given the pill 20 minutes before being fed. They found that the pill not only stimulated the release of hormones that signaled satiety, but also reduced the animals’ food intake by about 40%.

The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Novo Nordisk, and the National Science Foundation, among others, is still in its early stages.

“The behavioral change is profound, and that’s using the endogenous system rather than any exogenous therapeutic,” Traverso said in the MIT news story. “We have the potential to overcome some of the challenges and costs associated with delivery of biologic drugs by modulating the enteric nervous system.”

“For a lot of populations, some of the more effective therapies for obesity are very costly,” added Srinivasan. “At scale, our device could be manufactured at a pretty cost-effective price point. I’d love to see how this would transform care and therapy for people in global health settings who may not have access to some of the more sophisticated or expensive options that are available today.”

Federal regulators are scrambling to create guidelines for the ethical use of AI in a number of industries. Will healthcare collaborate or stake its own claim to governance?

As we head into the new year, the hot topic on every healthcare executive’s minds is AI. And one of the biggest questions surrounding the technology centers on who will regulate it.

The Biden Administration set the tone this past October with an Executive Order that places much of the federal regulatory burden on the Health and Human Services Department and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), a position held by Micky Tripathi. HHS then set the schedule with a final order in December that calls for more transparency in AI tools used in clinical setting by the end of the coming year.

While much of the action so far focuses on the technology vendors who are designing AI tools, health system leaders are keeping a close watch on how the federal government will affect their use of the technology. Many health systems are developing and using their own tools and platforms and pledging to maintain ethical standards in any clinical applications.

“We have a culture of responsibility that goes alongside agile innovation,” Ashley Beecy, MD, FACC, medical director of AI operations at NewYork-Presbyterian and an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, said in a HealthLeaders interview earlier this year, prior to Biden’s Executive Order. “Health systems have a unique opportunity” to establish their own standards for the proper use of AI.

Tarun Kapoor, MD, MBA, senior vice president and chief digital transformation officer at New Jersey-based Virtua Health, says healthcare organizations have the clinical background needed to develop effective and sustainable AI governance. They know how it’s going to be used in healthcare, and can focus on the nuances that federal regulators might miss.

“We have to get a lot better at [regulating AI] because we’re the ones using it,” he says.

Like many health (if not all) health systems using AI these days, Virtua Health has a policy that any AI services have a human being in the loop, meaning no actions are taken on AI-generated content until they’ve been reviewed by at least one flesh-and-blood supervisor. At this stage, when most projects are trained on back-office tasks, that’s a safe bet; but when the technology works its way into clinical decision-making, that additional step may be critical.

“Always put physicians in front of those decisions,” says Siva Namasivayam, CEO for Cohere Health, a Boston-based company that focuses on using AI to improve the prior authorization process. He says the technology should be used to enhance the physician’s role—what he calls “getting to the yes factor—rather than replacing it.

“We never use AI to say no,” he adds.

But who gets to make those decisions? The Biden Administration wants to be part of that chain of command, and is setting its sights on a collaborative environment, having secured voluntary pledges from more than three dozen health systems, payer organizations, and technology vendors to use AI responsibly. The agreement centers on a new catchphrase for ethical use: FAVES, which stands for Fair, Appropriate, Valid, Effective, and Safe.

The healthcare industry, still smarting from having electronic medical records forced on them before they were really ready for adoption, is playing nice for now. But in many hospitals, the C-Suite is facing pressure to take command of AI governance and make it an industry priority.

“You govern yourself at a level higher than the law,” says Kapoor.

He notes that health systems like Virtua Health are being very careful in how they use the technology, and not just green-lighting any potential use.

“Just because you can say anything and create your own [projects] doesn’t mean I’m going to let you say anything and do them,” he points out.

Kapoor says healthcare providers will understand the flaws in AI technology and the risks they present better than anyone outside the industry. And health systems like Virtua Health are addressing these challenges with steering committees that comprise not only clinical leaders but those in finance, IT, legal, and operational areas of the organization.

[Read also: Are Health Systems Mature Enough to USE AI Properly?]

Arlen Meyers, president and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs, a professor emeritus at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Colorado School of Public Health, says the industry has to step up and show leadership at a time when AI governance is still in flux. He notes hundreds of healthcare organizations have created dedicated centers of excellence for AI, and some have vowed to develop ethics and standards of use. Consumers, as well, could get into the act, helping to form an ‘AI Bill of Rights’ for patients.

“Right now, nobody trusts the government or the industry to regulate this,” he says. “When you look at who should be regulating what … the industry should be setting the guardrails.”

This next year will be pivotal in establishing governance for AI, as more and more health systems use the technology and push the boundaries beyond administrative use and into clinical applications. While the Biden administration is looking to fast-track regulation through HHS and the ONC, many wonder whether the healthcare industry will wait that long, or let a federal agency propose the first rules.

Others are wondering what it will take to create regulations that will work. One look at the current debate over interoperability and data blocking standards makes it clear that just because rules are created doesn’t mean they’ll be readily accepted.

“In the end, you follow the money,” says Meyers, who anticipates that healthcare and government will have to come to some sort of agreement to create something long-lasting. “That’s how the [rules] will be made.”

Nurses want to work with in-house teams that they can rely on, but it’s complicated.

Across the country, nursing unions are citing compensation, working conditions, and staffing issues- and now most recently, outsourcing—as their reasons to go on strike.

Registered nurses at SMM Health Saint Louis University Hospital have announced that they will hold a two-day strike beginning on December 27 to protest the outsourcing of RN jobs and management’s attempts at union-busting. This announcement was made by the National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) and National Nurses United (NNU) following a vote on December 8 that authorized the nurse bargaining team to call a strike.

Why turn to outsourcing?

Outsourcing is not a new phenomenon in healthcare, according to Katie Boston-Leary, Director of Nursing Programs at the American Nurses Association.

“Leaders opt to outsourcing after doing capital and operational cost analysis if they feel that there is a market for certain talents or expertise and they are unable to compete,” she says.

According to the NNU, SMM Health has been outsourcing nurse positions rather than hiring full-time nurses, which the union believes creates a revolving door of staff that do not become as involved in the surrounding community. This has been a concern throughout the industry during the ongoing nursing shortage, and with turnover rates as high as they are now.

Differing viewpoints

From the CNO perspective, there are two sides to the issue.

“Nurses would rather work with permanent members of the team and not a rotating group of nurses that seemingly have less requirements from a system perspective,” Boston-Leary says. “And that is making more money than them, [and] in some cases have lesser experience.”

On the other hand, outsourcing may sometimes be one of the only available options.

 “Leaders have to maintain operations by utilizing outsourced talent when they are unable to recruit,” Boston-Leary states. “As much as they abhor [the] high labor spend.”

Even without enough nurses, patients still need staff to care for them, and health systems still need to provide the people to do so.

“When you think about it, a nurse can resign [from] a position with as little as two weeks’ notice, but it could take one to three years to replace that nurse,” says Boston-Leary. “In the meantime, emergency and surgical departments are busy and they need staffed beds, which [are] also at a premium.”

The perspective of the nurses at Saint Louis University Hospital who are going on strike is clear. They believe that the ever-changing staff interrupts patient care and will impact the future of their health system for a long time.

“Temporary, outside agency staff should only be used to fill occasional gaps,” said Sarah DeWilde, RN in the medical-surgical unit at SLUH in the NNU statement. “Outsourcing will only exacerbate the current staffing crisis and further erode the quality of patient care for years to come.”

Redesigning post-discharge care to include mental health resources can reduce return visits and rehospitalizations and improve recovery and clinical outcomes

Health system leaders are constantly looking for strategies to reduce rehospitalizations. A new study says redesigning post-discharge care to include mental health services, including through digital health and virtual channels, could cut that return rate in half.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Washington, focuses on the millions of hospitalizations each year that are caused by a traumatic injury. Many of those patients return to the hospital after discharge because of mental health issues tied to that trauma, with as many as 40% dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Improving the care coordination process after a hospital visit is one of the top innovation challenges facing health systems. So many care gaps are created when the patient leaves the hospital and heads either to a rehab or SNF facility or back home. Doctor’s orders and prescriptions are forgotten or even ignored, care plans are interrupted or dropped altogether, and recovery is delayed, often leading to negative clinical outcomes, including rehospitalization.

The study, led by Laura Prater, PhD, MPH, MHA, an assistant professor at The Ohio State University of Public Health, and published in the Annals of Surgery, tracked 171 patients who were treated at a University of Washington trauma center. Half were treated via the traditional process, and half were involved in a five-year, three-step program that included enhanced care specific to mental health needs during hospitalization and 24/7 access to mental health services after discharge.

According to the study, 27% of patients undergoing traditional care were rehospitalized within three to six months, compared to 16% of patients involved in the mental health intervention program. After 12 to 15 months, 31% of the traditional-care patients were back in the hospital, compared to 17% of those in the intervention program.

“Being able to manage PTSD and other mental health concerns early on and receive regular follow-up support can prevent adverse long-term health problems and increase a survivor’s ability to live a productive, meaningful life,” Prater said in a press release issued by The Ohio State University. 

The intervention program included digital health tools aimed at offering on-demand services to those patients.

“The immediate text message or phone call response to questions and concerns is potentially the most meaningful element of the intervention, from the perspective of the survivors,” Prater said. “A lot of places use MyChart or another form of messaging, but responses can be delayed and that is problematic if someone is feeling overwhelmed. Having an immediate connection helped patients and their families to feel like they weren’t in it alone.” 

The study reinforces research done earlier this year at Vanderbilt University, which used a National Institutes of Health grant to study new methods of addressing post-intensive care syndrome (PICS), which can affect as many as 80% of patients discharged from a hospital after an ICU stay. That study found that a reconfigured post-discharge care management and coordination program focused on virtual care could reduce rehospitalizations and improve clinical outcomes.

Both studies point to a need to change how hospitalized patients are treated after they leave the hospital, with more emphasis placed on the traumatic nature of a hospital stay and improved access to mental health services to help patients recover—mentally as well as physically—from their health concerns.

“Being in the emergency department is traumatic in its own right, plus returning to the scene where you first received care following an injury or assault is not ideal,” Prater said in the press release. “Managing trauma and the mental health fallout from that trauma is best done at home, where you’re in a safe location.” 

Be brave enough to know what you don't know and to learn things you haven't learned before, she says

As president and CEO of Sumitomo Pharma America (SMPA), Myrtle Potter sets a high level of work performance for herself and her team members. And she doesn't apologize for it.

"I set really high standards as a leader and I demand a lot, but at the same time, I'm also a nurturer," she says. "I think my employees would be disappointed in me if I didn't expect great things from them. I believe they can deliver great things.”

“My job is to make sure the organization can deliver against its objectives, and to ensure it is prepared to do that," she adds.

Setting high standards of performance for your employees doesn't mean you aren't a caring boss, Potter says. There are many layers to running an organization, and an important one is being responsible for the growth and development of your employees.

Leaders must drive the strategy plan, the implementation, the follow-up, and meeting the financial goals. At the same time there's a responsibility to the health and well-being of the employees.

Potter says her ability to build strong, diverse teams is the key to her success.

"The secret to my success is I think strategically about team building, about leadership development, and the selection of leaders who I choose to have on my team," she says. "I make it a point not to hire people who are just like me, because I believe that different points of view are essential for the advancement of innovation and for the best problem solving."

Myrtle Potter, president and CEO of Sumitomo Pharma America. Photo courtesy SMPA. 

Potter grew up in a small southwest town in a family of eight. She credits learning how to share a bathroom with five other siblings for her team-building skills. Rather than being a hindrance to her sizable aspirations, she says her small-town upbringing set her on the path to becoming a strong leader.

"I was raised to be very brave," Potter says. "Fearlessness was instilled in me. Even though I grew up in a small town, where everybody knew each other, my aspiration was to go to the University of Chicago. My parents helped me financially to get there. It took a lot of guts to get on that plane by myself and head off to the big city of Chicago. But I grew up in an environment where I was encouraged to stretch, and I believe this is an important trait for anyone looking to do great things in their career. "

When Potter is mentoring others, she sets up the same encouraging environment that her parents did.

"I advise people to leave their handprint on every job they take. In other words, don't just warm a seat, make a difference," she says. "People will remember you because of the contributions you've made and the difference that you've made in the business."

Potter also encourages others to be brave, as her parents taught her.  

"Be brave enough to know what you don't know and to learn things you haven't learned before. Seek out the education and the support that you need to round out your understanding and your knowledge base."

Establishing a Career Trajectory

At the University of Chicago, Potter took a couple of jobs at the University Hospital. She worked in a lab, as well as on a patient floor for seriously ill patients with dermatological diseases and neurological diseases.

"I was a ward clerk,” she says. “I really loved it because I got to essentially be a part of the medical teams. That was the defining moment that motivated me to be in the biopharmaceutical industry, that and my dad having been a medic in the Army. I was really close to medicine my whole life. And so that was really the impetus for me joining the pharmaceutical industry."

Over the past 30 years Potter has served as vice president at Merck, president at Bristol-Myers Squibb, and chief operating officer and president of commercial operations at Genentech, as well as the Vant Operating Chair at Roivant Pharma. She also ran her own consulting business, Myrtle Potter & Company, for more than 13 years. 

Over this time frame, she says she has honed her leadership skills.

"Today, I understand the power of listening,” she says. “Listening for congruence, listening for alignment, listening for gaps in strategy, listening for times when an organization might feel freer, or they need to be bolstered up, listening for when they feel empowered. Developing others, thinking ten to 12 steps ahead, supporting the organization through the good times, and the tough times. Those are the kinds of things I think about now, versus when I got my very first management job."

Facing the Challenges of a Large Merger

Earlier this year Potter faced a new challenge: The merger of not two companies, but seven. She was instrumental in successfully bringing Sumitovant, Myovant Sciences, Urovant Sciences, Enzyvant Therapeutics, Sumitomo Pharma America Holdings, Sumitomo Pharma Oncology, and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals together to form SMPA. 

"As you can imagine, that was just a Herculean task," she says. "Combining a couple of companies is challenging, and I have done that before, but we're talking about seven."

Potter led the companies through the challenge, following a strategy that allowed the transitioning employees of all seven companies to choose whether to join the new company. Mergers can be stressful for employees, and she says she tried to give everyone the opportunity to engage in their future role at the new company.

As opposed to just bringing all the employees together and saying, 'This is your new job, now go off and do it,' Potter says she brought people to the organization with a lot of integrity and honor.

"We literally gave every single transitioned employee a new offer letter, a new description of their role, and gave them the choice to say yes or no," Potter says. "It was very empowering to hear people say, 'Yes, I want to be a part of what you and your leaders are building.'"

While that was a huge task accomplished in just a matter of months, it isn't the proudest moment of Potter's career. That was at Genentech, when the biotech held record sales and earnings growth for 19 of 20 consecutive quarters and launched seven novel therapies in just five years.

"When I joined Genentech, we thought we might have two product launches," she says. "We never anticipated that everything would just keep growing the way that it did. I was co-chair of the Product Portfolio Committee, and we created the most valuable drug pipeline in the world at that time. That's something I'm very, very proud of. We really made a big difference for a lot of patients."

Charting the Future of SMPA

Potter is also proud of SMPA's endeavors to deliver needed therapies to patients who live with difficult to manage conditions.

The company’s portfolio includes treatments in psychiatry, neurology, oncology, urology, women's health, and gene therapy for cystic fibrosis. One of SMPA’s most interesting projects is a treatment for children with congenital athymia, an ultra-rare disease characterized by the absence of a functioning thymus. Most congenital athymia babies die within three years, even with supportive care.

The product, Rethymic, was approved by the FDA in November 2021; it’s the only FDA-approved tissue-based treatment for this condition.

"Rethymic greatly improves [the] survival [rate] for these children," Potter says. "There may be only 20-25 of these children diagnosed in the United States a year, but we care greatly about all of them."

Another SMPA objective is to use technology and AI to advance new technologies to transform operations through the acceleration of digital.

"Our industry is changing so much and one of the things that's really exciting is we truly are leveraging technology in a way that other companies just simply aren't doing," Potter says. "When you're thinking about driving innovation and cultivating leaders, you need to think about who is comfortable talking about AI and natural language processing and using it to solve problems."

Sumitomo has built two in-house technology platforms that use the latest generative AI and machine learning tools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of research to find new targets, clinical trials, and commercialization of new therapies.

The supermarket chain is redesigning its in-store health clinics to focus on seniors in Medicare plans, who often face challenges accessing primary care and are looking for better services.

A new partnership aims to give seniors another option for primary care: The supermarket.

Kroger Health, the healthcare arm of the Cincinnati-based retailer with more than 2,700 grocery stores in 35 states and the District of Columbia, is joining forces with the Better Health Group to focus its 225 Little Clinic in-store walk-in clinics on primary care services for seniors on Medicare, including Medicare Advantage plans.

Kroger joins a growing list of disruptors from other industries entering the healthcare market with consumer-focused primary and specialty care services. Companies like Amazon, Walmart, Publix, Google, and national pharmacy chains like Walgreens, CVS Health, and Rite Aid are all looking to replicate the success of the retail experience in healthcare for people who face barriers to accessing care or are more comfortable going to a store than a hospital or doctor’s office.

[See also: ATA Urges Clinicians to Take Charge, Own Virtual Care Innovation.]

Some within the healthcare industry have called this the battle for primary care, with health systems and medical practices looking to keep their patients and attract new ones in the face of competition from outside organizations. According to a Bain & Company study issued in 2030, these disruptors could capture 30% of the primary care market within six years.

“As the industry continues to shift toward value-based reimbursement, there has been an increase of nontraditional players and models in primary care,” Erin Ney, MD, an associate partner at Bain & Company, said in a press release accompanying the report. “As we look ahead, rising costs, physician shortages, consumerism and digital disruption will continue putting pressure on traditional healthcare models, paving the way for additional growth of models that promote more efficient care, improved outcomes and reduced total cost.”

Health system executives have been urged to improve the patient experience, including adopting virtual care and digital health tools, and embrace retail strategies that focus on convenience and reliability.

With organizations like Kroger, Amazon, and Walmart offering alternatives to the doctor’s office or hospital, experts say health systems need to identify and focus on what they can offer that others can’t—which in many cases is the connection to a respected hospital or medical group. Critics, meanwhile, say cost, complexity, and challenges to access are turning consumers away from healthcare and opening the door for the disruptors.

[See also: Assessing the Biggest Disruptors in Healthcare.]

The Better Health Group, which launched in 2016 at Physician Partners, operates more than 160 VIPcare clinics focused on senior services and partners with more than 1,200 providers. Officials at both Kroger Health and Better Health say the partnership will advance value-based care for a population desperately in need of focused services and better access to care.

The collaboration will begin at selected Kroger supermarkets in the Atlanta area before branching out in 2024 to other stores.

Amid geopolitical conflict, financial headwinds, and ramped nursing shortages and unrest, there's a lot of healing that needs to happen. Starting with the healers. 

Editor’s note: This is part 2 of a two-part series. Part 1 was published on Monday, December 18.

To set the stage for success in 2024 and beyond, CNOs must build up their teams, both in number and resilience, nurse execs and experts tell HealthLeaders. That means making compensation compelling, fostering shared purpose, redesigning care models, and playing a very long game when it comes to recruiting.

Here are some more of the ways that CNOs are improving teamwork going into 2024. 

For more information, check out the full article here.