CEO Exchange: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This invitation-only event brings more than 40 healthcare CEOs together for two days of strategy sessions. Some highlighted topics: cost reduction, quality improvement, risk-sharing agreements and payer contracts.

With apologies to Andy Williams, HealthLeaders' annual CEO Exchange—this week in Colorado Springs—is the most wonderful time of the year, at least for me. At least professionally.

Nowhere else can I fill my notebook with more than a year's worth of story ideas and discussion topics in only two days. The reason: For those two days, I've got more than 40 of my most valuable sources all to myself to discuss the innovative ways they're transforming their healthcare organizations in a world that is changing quickly under their feet.

That's why they're here, after all. We invite well more than 40 CEOs to this event, which is supported by our sponsors. Of course, there are scheduling issues with many who would otherwise like to come. Others ignore our advances, passing up an opportunity to learn from others who are hard at work transforming their own organizations to compete within a system that's becoming more efficient, less harmful, and more useful for the customer: the patient.

I don't know about those who haven't joined us in Colorado Springs this week, but the group that is here wants to lead change. For them, the best and fastest way to do it is by sharing with their peers the newest and most innovative ideas for transformation.

Because the discussion sessions at the Exchange are "structured conversations," we take care to survey the participants before they arrive on what they feel is most important to discuss, and we incorporate those topics into our three roundtable sessions, which all CEOs attend.

For those who can't attend, we produce plenty of informative content from these sessions. I'll explore the themes and borrow sources from the Exchange for my coverage of leadership in the next dozen months, both in the magazine and here in my weekly column, but I have to admit: reading about it is an inadequate substitute.

Leading up to this year's event, CEOs overwhelmingly indicated a preference to talk about

• Cost reduction and efficiency gains
• Investments in improving quality and patient safety
• Risk-sharing agreements and payer contracts

Not surprisingly, those are areas in deep flux, and many organizations are trying tailored ideas that they feel can give their organizations the best chance at the ultimate goal: improving the health of the population they serve.

It's interesting to note that these executives picked those topics over reimbursement and the impact of health reform; mergers, acquisitions and clinical partnerships, maximizing the revenue cycle and clinical and information technology. That in itself is insight to me.

This is not to suggest that the challenges of leading innovative and thriving organizations can be boiled down to three bullet points. They can't. Which is why we spend hours discussing among a highly varied group of leaders the solutions they've tried, where they've failed, and how they assess the risks and rewards of trying something new. That difficult job can be made easier if there are other trusted leaders to rely on who have tried it before.

That the health of the local population has percolated to the top of CEOs' current strategic thinking is hopeful for all of us as future patients, because never before have so many leaders had the hope of the necessary financial alignment to help achieve those goals.

In many ways, they still don't, but the fact that offering value—not volume—is dominating the discourse, means initiatives that bring value are in a position to pay off, both financially and in the health of patients.

It will be interesting to find out what exactly is motivating these leaders and where they are innovating. Some are leading multi-hospital systems, some are leading critical access hospitals. You may not think initially that these two people have much in common, but they're struggling with many of the same challenges.

In our survey, dealing with the challenges of implementing data analytics in clinical decision-making was equally important for both types of CEOs. They can and do learn from each other, which is why they keep coming back, and why I do too.

CEO Exchange: Pressure is On to Partner, Drive Quality

Dealing with these shifting sands effectively is the CEOs' great challenge. Understanding where their organizations can lead change and where they must follow is a key CEO-level skill. Rewards for getting it right will be many, but penalties for getting it wrong will be equally devastating.

Yet that's what good CEOs ask for: a challenge and the opportunity to lead through it. These discussions will help them in that struggle, and will help me in bringing you new ideas and proven strategies for excelling in the future.