3 Ways Tampa General Hospital CEO Bucks Healthcare Industry Trends

CEO John Couris shares three ways the system has stayed above the financial fray.

CEOs are now embracing the new normal. As 2023 starts to wind down, many health systems found themselves in a year of transition, away from the crisis mode of the pandemic and looking forward to new opportunities and new strategies that work in the current healthcare environment.

Challenges will always remain for CEOs, but one CEO in particular says his organization has come out of the pandemic practically unscathed.

John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General Hospital (TGH)—a nationally recognized, nonprofit, academic and research health system partnered with the University of South Florida—recently spoke with HealthLeaders about the system's successes throughout the pandemic and the work that he and his team are continuing to deploy as they set their sights on the next decade.

While health systems have been digging their way out for years following the immense COVID shake-up, Couris says that his system bucked the financial trend of sitting in the red.

What does he mean by that? There are three key areas that put TGH ahead of the curve mid- and post-pandemic:

1. Patient volumes

A dip in outpatient volume pushed a lot of organizations into the red. Routine exams and surgeries finally came back, but patients weren't eager to rush to the same institutions that managed COVID patients.

While patient volumes have since increased for both inpatient and outpatient services, TGH’s patient volumes were never affected in the first place.

"Our volumes are way over pre-pandemic levels," Couris says. "Thankfully, we never lost any money or operated in the red through the pandemic or after the pandemic, and I'm taking out any kind of COVID money," he adds.

2. Reliance on agency staffing

Agency staffing became a trend for organizations looking to curb their staffing shortages while some nurses took advantage of making more money doing their job by traveling to different systems. This was great for nurses looking to pay off their student loans or to cover the increase in cost of living—but for hospitals and health systems, it meant shelling out more cash to be properly staffed.

While TGH did rely on agency staffing, they were able to curb those numbers to help with their financials.

"Our reliance on agency is down almost by 70%," Couris says. This gives the system the opportunity to invest in its own workforce and invest in more patient options.

3. Supply chain wins

Just as clinical care workers were in short supply and high demand during the pandemic, so were everyday items used to take care of patients.

But the healthcare industry wasn't the only one affected by supply chain woes—almost every industry was affected, and continues to be affected, by falling short to the high demand of everything from drug shortages to construction materials to car manufacturing components.

And while TGH did run into supply chain issues when it came to construction projects, it only pushed projects back by about three months, and the system was able to open a freestanding emergency department.

"We've been able to manage through the supply chain issues relatively well," Couris says. "We're not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the team has done a nice job with managing supply chain Issues that have been affected by COVID."

Maintaining success

The key to these successes is continuing to maintain them while creating more. How will the organization do that? By following its robust strategic plan, Couris says, which they are currently in the middle of refreshing.

The organization refreshes its strategic plan centered around discipline and focus every five years, which has kept the organization on track, focused on the present and near future, and not being distracted by the distant future of an everchanging industry.

"That kind of discipline and focus and rigor that we bring to working the issues has helped us," Couris says. "There is a tendency sometimes in our industry to get distracted by the next shiny object that comes into your view. We've worked hard at not allowing ourselves to get distracted unnecessarily; that has helped us to dig to go a little deeper."

Additionally, the organization conducts an annual initiative called Stop, Start, Continue.

"We go through an exercise that looks at all of our strategies, all of our tactics, the things we've accomplished, things we've struggled with and haven't accomplished," Couris says. "We take all of that work and we run it up against our vision of being the safest and most innovative academic health system in America. We ask the leadership team: Is this something we need to stop? Is there something new that we need to start? Is there something that's going well that we need to double down on and continue?"

This team effort has enabled the health system to grow and become stronger during Couris' 6-year tenure.

"When I got here [six] years ago, we were a $1.3 billion health system in net revenue. We're now a $2.5 billion health system," he says.

The system had 17 locations when he first joined, which has now grown to over 130 locations, including a new behavioral health hospital the system broke ground on this week, and is slated to open in late 2024.

"Six years ago, our quality was stagnant, [now] our quality continues to improve," Couris adds. "We were nationally ranked in every major U.S. News and World Report indicator last year for the first time in the history of the institution. We were either in the top 50 or the top 10% in every service they measure quantitatively."