St. Luke's CEO Sticks to Strong Health System Strategy and Vision During Pandemic

Just two-and-a-half months into his new role, CEO Chris Roth shares his leadership strategy about how St. Luke's is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Prior to serving in his new role as President and CEO at St. Luke's Health System, Chris Roth served as COO for the past six years, and has grown in various positions with the Idaho-based health system over the past 13 years. This internal succession has enabled the team to not miss "a beat as it related to the transition, and the subsequent preparation and readiness for this pandemic," he says.

As the new CEO, Roth set goals for the organization and the health system created a strategic plan for 2020. "We had just approved our five-year strategy in January with our board. We had a nice laid-out plan," he says. In February, Roth shared the strategy and his vision with the organization's workforce. "I was doing a lot of that in person throughout the health system and loved doing that." Then the coronavirus pandemic happened.

Related: St. Luke's New CEO Builds On a Solid Foundation

Roth spoke with HealthLeaders on how the health system's focus had to be tweaked, but not by much. "Our priorities are No. 1: safe care of patients. No. 2: safety of our staff, including having a great environment to work and practice in … but the initial focus of our strategy [hasn't changed.]" Roth says  the organization had to change its near-term focus to deal with the pandemic, yet its long-term strategy remains strong.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HL: What is your leadership strategy during a pandemic?

Roth: I don't believe my leadership strategy or my style has changed. There's certainly areas where I'm emphasizing a little bit more. We're a caring organization; the first words in our strategic plan are "Caring people are the heart of St. Luke's." And so, as a CEO, it's my responsibility to lead by example to be caring, to be supportive, authentic, transparent. I believe in servant leadership and serving others and the needs of the team. The challenge of not being able to get out and about in person the way I would have been in the past [has] created new opportunities for me to engage with people.

I'm much more attuned and concerned about the safety of our people who are potentially exposed to the virus and what that could cause, and that's a concern. We're always concerned about safety, but it's added a new dimension seeing what's going on across the world.

I think a time like this, a worldwide crisis, really provides an opportunity to focus and test some things in our organization. So, one of the things we're [asking ourselves], "Are we responding consistent to our mission and our vision?" and the answer is "Yes." Are we responding relative to our strategy of quality, safety, accessibility, and affordability?" and the answer is "Yes." I would say that the focus I laid out prior to the pandemic, relative to our priority areas, has really not changed.

We have seen more movement within our health system on improving accessibility than we've seen in quite some time. Because we've been forced to innovate, to expand our telehealth and virtual care capabilities, to do more visits via the phone, we've removed some of the constraints we've had in the past. Some of those have been out of necessity, and some have been our choice. But we're seeing this as an opportunity to accelerate our strategy.

Affordability is certainly on our mind at least for this near term, but that's frankly taken a backseat, because we are focused on caring for people in need. We've reduced things like elective surgeries and others. The financial considerations internally are certainly top of mind. Our weight of a focus has shifted a little bit, but the strategies remain the same.

HL: What systems are in place to ensure safety and ensure your health system has the tools it needs to lead through the pandemic?

Roth: In early January, we started shoring up our supply chain. At the end of January, we began our formal preparation efforts. We implemented the hospital Incident Command System at a regional and a system level. We have all the formal roles [filled in for] planning and logistics, finance, communications, medical technical specialties. We have leaders in every position three deep. They rotate [shifts] three on, six off, so we don't burn out our leadership. And that structure has enabled us to stay on top of a rapidly evolving environment and make sure that we are monitoring all aspects from supply chain to health and well-being of our people to the continual advances in science happening at a rapid rate.

Whether it's infection prevention protocols that we can initiate, whether it's conservation of PPE, we have to be very mobile and nimble. I'd say setting up a strong structure with clear roles and accountabilities and communications to support is critical, and then getting the right people in the right positions is paramount, and we've been able to do that successfully.

HL: What have been the issues affecting St. Luke's Health System before the pandemic and now?

Roth: Supplies is certainly first and foremost. We started seeing some stress in January, where we began, really early on, shoring up our supply chain. But as we're reading in the news, we're challenged with PPE and some basic core supplies, and so we are seeing supply chain disruption and inconsistency in a way we haven't seen in the past, so that's certainly a difference.

We've traditionally been pretty blessed with having access to strong staffing professionals. Being in a state that's been kind of a growing, thriving economy with good relationships with schools and so forth, staffing has not been a huge challenge for us, historically. Right now, in Idaho, we've have had a couple hotspots in some of our communities, but we're not as busy as we typically are. We have a strong complement of staff and we're ready to mobilize at any notice, and so that's not a challenge for us at the moment. I think certainly the stress of this event is certainly weighing on our staff, and that's certainly different.

And then related to beds and capacity, we're also running on a typical day lower capacity than we normally do. And fortunately, we're just not experiencing yet in Idaho—and, hopefully there's not a yet—the surge that other communities have seen. So, we've got some good capacity in our hospital beds. We're running at generally normal capacity in our intensive care units.

I don't want to say it's business as usual—it's certainly not—but of all the three listed, it's really the supply chain that's been the most different, and then the stress on our teams.

HL: What can other healthcare CEOs learn from your leadership strategy during a pandemic?

Roth: I recommend to any CEO to think about how to see this as an opportunity to accelerate their strategy and look for the long term. This is an opportunity to strengthen a culture and bring people together. I'm seeing teamwork. We have a strong organization and culture, but I'm seeing teamwork, innovation, pride, togetherness, like I haven't seen before. It's certainly stressful, but my personal strategy going into being a CEO is to focus on culture community and our long-term success as an organization, and I see this as an opportunity to accelerate every single one of those.

HL: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Roth: I'm confident we're going to get through this. I think we're all concerned as healthcare leaders, and certainly as a community. I'm proud of the scientific community for coming together.

I think this has exposed some pretty significant flaws in our healthcare system overall, whether it's our public healthcare system, whether it's our national or local preparation. I hope we learn a great deal from this; I know that we will. It has been frustrating to see everybody working in their own silos, whether it's competing for supplies, or equipment, or testing, the list goes on and on. We've always known healthcare as a very fragmented system, and I don't mean just hospitals, clinics. I mean public policy, broader coordination, and this is bringing that home.

We're responding the best we can, but I hope that we as leaders can reflect on this as we get through this, and figure out how we can break down some of the barriers that have existed to date. We've just got a lot to learn and I know we will learn from it.