Hand-pick 30 of the most innovative CEOs in healthcare and invite them to gather for three days of intense discussions. What do you get? Rare access to an unprecedented concentration of thought leadership. We'll be parsing it and sharing it for weeks and months to come.
I'm nothing if not economical with my time. That's because with three little kids, I don't have a lot of it. That's one reason why our inaugural invitation-only HealthLeaders CEO Exchange event this week in California is so exciting.
With all the ideas flowing back and forth between our editorial staff and 30-odd healthcare CEOs, I'll make good use of my time. Here's why: What takes me days and weeks of persuading from schedule managers, executive assistants, and an unyielding calendar can be accomplished in three days of virtually unlimited access to some of the most innovative leaders in healthcare.
The level of learning, insights, and story ideas that will come from our time together will be sky-level. I just hope I can take it all in. And you'd better hope my colleagues and I can take it in as well, because in the coming weeks and months, we'll be sharing with you what we've learned during three days of intense discussions surrounding physician alignment and integration, cost reduction strategies, and mergers and acquisitions.
Just like we did last year with our inaugural CFO Exchange, which we repeated last month in Kiawah Island, SC, we'll break out the most interesting and salient points our guests make about the many changes the healthcare business is undergoing right now.
Producing such an event is no small undertaking.
Healthcare CEOs are some of the busiest executives in the world right now as they look to fundamentally reshape the way their organizations do business in the coming years. Many have likened the transformation to having one foot on the dock and the other in a boat with a racing engine, but that analogy doesn't even begin to illuminate the changes through which these people will have to lead their organizations in the coming decade.
Last year, in one session with the CFOs, we focused on the new era of cost control outside of traditional areas such as the supply chain and physician preference. Panelists talked about the cost drivers in their hospitals and health systems, the cost reduction strategies in which they are finding the most success, and the relationship between clinical quality and cost reduction.
One hospital internally funded an innovation center, through which it developed analytical tools that can, in essence, predetermine whether or not a patient has heart failure even before the physician knows it. They can also apply from that a social variant algorithm to determine to what extent that patient will be at risk for readmission within 30 days.
As I mentioned, this is cutting edge stuff.
The CEOs aren't just coming together under our auspices for our benefit. They'll learn from each other what works and what isn't quite ready for prime time. We'll also share with them our current research—ideas that may help them navigate the uncertain future.
Finally, through special reports like the ones mentioned above, we'll share their insights with you. It's the next best thing to being there, and it's just one of the ways we're helping leaders do their jobs in an increasingly difficult, but exciting and transformative era in healthcare.
Philip Betbeze is the senior leadership editor at HealthLeaders.