Shane Strum shares how his past experience in public service shapes how he appreciates healthcare, current pain points, and what 2022 holds for the health system.
Shane Strum joinedBroward Health in March 2021, taking over as CEO of the Fort Lauderdale-based health system during the coronavirus pandemic. During his first seven months, he would have to juggle the Delta variant, staffing shortages, vaccine and mask mandates, and so much more.
His leadership appointment followed several years of abrupt resignations and C-suite turmoil for the organization. Gino Santorio, who previously served as CEO, announced his resignation in November 2020, kicking off the executive search that landed Strum back into the healthcare sector after working in public service.
Most recently, Strum served as chief of staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Prior to working for the state government, he served as senior vice president of Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida.
During a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Strum shared how his experience in public service shapes how he appreciates healthcare, what his first seven months as CEO have looked like, current pain points, and what 2022 holds for the health system.
The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: You most recently served as chief of staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. How has that experience shaped how you think about healthcare in general?
Shane Strum: I was in healthcare prior, then I became the chief of staff to Gov. DeSantis, and it gave me a whole new view of how things work. It makes you think so differently on how to tackle some of the big issues.
The hospital I was at previously always did a wonderful job. We were the boots on the ground; we served our community. But what we don't realize is how government is more connected to healthcare than ever before.
It gives you a better understanding of who can influence the type of appropriate research and funding dollars that are necessary to make sure that we have that next generation approach.
It shows that it's more of a partnership than the public ever realized. It helped open my eyes and gave me a real opportunity to meet a lot of CEOs across the state of Florida.
HL: What was your experience stepping into your role this past March and leading during the late-summer patient surge?
Strum: I had to run parallel tracks. CEOs at the hospitals and our chief operating officer had to roll up their sleeves and be out there on the floor. The doctors were working longer hours than ever before, the nurses were providing more critical care than ever before. Nurses have a tough role; they were trying to keep that line of communication open with the staff, the administration, the families, and the patient.
At the same time, we saw more people coming back for all sorts of cases that they postponed, especially in oncology. So, we were managing everyone coming back who missed out on the services, and then we had all the COVID patients that were coming in and filling a lot of the other beds.
HL: What current pain points is the health system facing and what strategies are you implementing to address those?
Strum: The biggest pain point would be labor; it's unbelievable right now. We still have a tremendous number of per diem and travelers. Their average hourly rate is about $155 to $160, so that is costing a tremendous amount of money. We also are paying the nurses a shift differential, so there's an extra $1,200 after the three days. Then there's a bonus. Our expenses are through the roof and there's no way to back that down immediately because a lot of these are another six-to-eight-week contracts for the travelers.
Broward Health and Memorial just did a run on the numbers to see how many of these nurse travelers live in the county: 43% of them are jumping from our hospital to other hospitals because they're being paid so much more.
The other issue that we're seeing is a lot of that institutional knowledge and history is being lost. The nurses and doctors who are here and were already on a career path to wind down, they stayed because we needed them. A lot of them had already planned retirements, so now that we've come out of the Delta variant, it's time for them to start to get ready to wind it down.
In the last couple of months, we have hired 286 nurses. One of the issues of bringing on a lot of newer nurses is they don't have as much clinical experience. A lot of hospitals would put them immediately on the floor. We're very cautious about that. We believe in training and also time with another clinician and mentoring. So, we've actually gone to the extraordinary measures of putting them into an additional training of 12 to 16 more weeks. We want them to ease into it and make no mistakes.
HL: What will be your main focus points in 2022 and how will you address those?
Strum: I would say innovation, data, and real estate.
We want to be as innovative as possible. We're even open to disruption, because the industry is going through a lot of changes right now because of COVID. We're looking hard to peel back all the layers on how we can do things differently. What does the future hospital of tomorrow look like? How does Broward Health make sure that they're not left behind? What type of partnerships are available? What are the service lines that we should really be focused on that benefit this community? Are we hiring the best folks that are out there?
On the real estate side, this hospital has done a good job for many years of, when possible, trying to acquire property around all the other hospitals that we own, so we can grow our footprint. Broward Health Medical Center has a large footprint, but we have recently acquired more property, which will allow us to create a more effective and more efficient model. The outpatient model is something that's becoming so much bigger, so how do we look at the outpatient model? How do we look at making sure we have the right rehab within our own system to take care of the level one traumas that we get as a level one trauma institute?
We've also collected so much information over this period that we want to try to figure out how to utilize it. We have a tremendous amount of dashboards, and we can live off data, but how do we understand all the data that's been presented to us, and then what do we do with that data?
Michael Abrams, MA, managing partner at Numerof & Associates, offers his take on staffing shortage trends and how to solve them.
It seems that the whole world is currently short-staffed, and the healthcare industry is no different.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, hospitals and health systems struggled with burnout among nurses and physicians, talent pools, and keeping up with staffing demands.
Following over 18-months of the pandemic, organizations are facing even more dire circumstances when it comes to juggling staff and patients.
Michael Abrams, MA, managing partner at Numerof & Associates, recently spoke with HealthLeaders to offer his take on the healthcare staffing shortage trends and how to solve them.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What staffing shortage trends are you currently seeing play out in hospitals and health systems?
Michael Abrams: What struck me is that the news is full of actions that various hospitals and systems are taking to address the shortages that they're experiencing. There are fixes that are touted as innovations; these are superficial fixes that are being billed as innovations, but they're a little more than Band-Aids. I've been around in the consulting business for a long time, and we've had crises like this, in the 80s, the 90s, and the 2000s, and they all had the same underlying issue, and that is the industrialization of patient care.
What has been happening is that hospitals, particularly as they feel more and more financially squeezed, are finding ways to stretch available nursing resources to cover more patients in less time, so that the patient experience is more transactional for both patients and nurses. This is not only a disservice to patients, but it minimizes the emotional payoff that was the reason that most nurses joined the profession in the first place.
When you take that ongoing trend, then you add that administrators are fining, and firing, and shaming the same frontline healthcare workers, that they called heroes a few months back, over an arbitrary vaccinate mandate, it's no wonder that many nurses and other frontline workers have lost any sense of loyalty to the institution that employs them.
The fact that these crises reoccur almost predictively, the people who are charged with running organizations in the industry, simply haven't learned anything from past, so-called crises.
I'm putting responsibility for the current nursing and frontline healthcare worker shortage at the feet of most administrators across the industry who continue to operate the same way that this has been done for the last 30 years.
HL: What other long-term changes need to be made?
Abrams: Hospital management needs to double down on efforts to engage the workforce and end efforts to shame the same staff they were praising just a few months ago. They need to commit to a new business model that is patient-centered, longitudinal, and cross-continuum, taking on a payment model that allows them to de-emphasize doing what it takes to get paid for every little service, and incentivizes everybody to do what's right for the patient.
The reason that so many hospitals are slicing and dicing the patient experience in order to make their overhead dollar stretch a little further, is because they don't have accountability for outcomes. If people could rate hospitals and their healthcare experience the way they rate restaurants on Yelp, I think it would change a lot. If what hospitals got paid was linked to the quality of the experience that people had when they went there, I think that would create some real change in terms of how they allocate that.
HL: So, it's all about finding that balance between finding that positive experience for both employees patients?
Abrams: Yes, and how we respond to the things that matter to them.
The fundamental thing is that other business organizations have figured it out. What needs to be done to deal with this is still largely a mystery to many healthcare delivery organizations, because they just haven't taken the time and haven't made the effort to really understand what matters.
This is the first new brand campaign for the academic healthcare system in more than a decade.
NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) launched a new brand platform and campaign this week.
The "Stay Amazing" campaign seeks to encourage the health system's patients and all New Yorkers to prioritize their health and wellbeing and showcases how NYP is a committed and accessible wellness partner.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many patients put off care either due to fear of being infected or services being temporarily shut down. The campaign is "intended to inspire" patients to be proactive and seek care at NYP for both common and complex conditions.
"After caring for New Yorkers through the worst public health crisis of our lifetime, NYP is more committed than ever to improving the health of all the communities we serve and helping New Yorkers thrive,", Steven J. Corwin, MD, president and CEO of NYP, said in a statement. "As we look to the future, we are transforming how care is delivered, making it more convenient, accessible and equitable for all. We recognize that what people need from their health care providers has changed, and this campaign represents how we are evolving to meet our patients’ needs, delivering exceptional care wherever and whenever patients need it."
This is the first new brand campaign for the academic healthcare system in more than a decade and builds off of the "Amazing Things are Happening Here" a strategic, multimedia advertising campaign, which successfully differentiated the health system from its competitors in New York.
NYP, which has 10 hospitals across the Greater New York area, more than 200 care clinics and medical groups, and offers a wide array of telemedicine services, has grown its physical and digital footprint in the last decade. Throughout its growth, the NYP Hospital was ranked number 1 in New York and number 7 in the nation by the U.S. News & World Report, making this the 21st consecutive year that the hospital is the top-ranked hospital in the state.
"The health care industry has faced unbelievable challenges over the past 19 months, but that has only strengthened our resolve to improve the health and well-being of our communities. NYP is more than a health care provider; we are a partner to our patients along their wellness journeys," Devika Mathrani, senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer at NYP, said in a statement. "We want to help New Yorkers stay amazing. The goal of our new brand platform is to help people feel empowered about their health."
The national and regional branding campaign will appear in print, television, radio, online media outlets, social media, and digital advertising.
26 attorneys general across the United States, the District of Columbia, and Guam urge the court to block the merger.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro have spearheaded a bipartisan coalition of 26 attorneys general to oppose the merger of New Jersey's Hackensack Memorial Hospital and Englewood Healthcare Foundation.
The AGs filed an amicus brief Tuesday morning in the Federal Trade Commission v. Hackensack Memorial Hospital and Englewood Healthcare Foundation, that urged the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the temporary halt of the merger because of its potential anticompetitive impact.
In the brief, the AGs state: "States plays a significant role in reviewing healthcare transactions and understanding the impact of consolidation in our states. This role uniquely situates the States to offer views on the impact of anticompetitive healthcare provider mergers and conduct within our respective states. It is this knowledge and experience in healthcare markets, which supports why the States respectfully ask this Court to affirm the district court’s opinion and uphold the preliminary injunction."
Bonta said in a statement: "In California, we’ve seen firsthand the effects of a large non-profit healthcare system’s anticompetitive practices. In our settlement with Sutter Health, we were able to ensure increased transparency and end practices that decrease the accessibility and affordability of healthcare. However, we look to federal agencies and federal antitrust law to prevent potential anticompetitive mergers of for-profit hospitals and of other providers. With COVID-19 continuing to impact communities across the country, affordable and accessible healthcare is more important than ever. We have to get this right."
Shapiro echoed Bonta's sentiments in a statement: "We know from our experiences here in Pennsylvania that it is critical for people to have good-quality, affordable healthcare choices in their own communities. Ensuring that there is strong competition in the healthcare system helps keep prices down and still provides patients with quality care."
The brief was also signed by the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Guam, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.
Hackensack Meridian Health and Englewood Health signed a definitive merger agreement in October 2019. In December 2020, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it intended to block the proposed merger, saying it would create a monopoly that would drive up prices in Bergen County.
The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey further granted the request in August 2021, stating that "the merger would result in anticompetitive effects like higher prices and lower-quality care, without any extraordinary efficiencies to offset those harms."
The merger has garnered support from healthcare organizations, including the American Hospital Association, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the New Jersey Hospital Association, the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, and a group of five economists who have all recently submitted "friend of court briefs."
Nisha Morris, vice president of marketing and communications for City of Hope Orange County, shares the organization's successful strategies.
When a healthcare organization has grown roots in its community and already engages its consumers, marketing can still be a difficult task. But what about for those organizations who must enter a new community?
COH opened its first Orange County location in Newport Beach, California, in January 2020. And while Orange County has a "seemingly healthy lifestyle," it doesn't mean that the people in the community are immune to cancer statistics. Currently, the national cancer statistic is that one in three people will get cancer, Nisha Morris, the vice president of marketing and communications for COH Orange County, said in a recent interview.
There are plans currently underway to expand the cancer care footprint with the creation of a new comprehensive cancer campus in Irvine, California, which is slated to open in 2022.
Prior to opening that first location, the cancer treatment organization needed to utilize marketing strategies to connect with the community and learn their needs and have brand awareness. In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Morris shares the organization's successful strategies on making a name in its new community.
Community engagement
COH Orange County started to engage with the community in Orange County a few years before their first location in the county opened, Morris said.
"Entering into a new market, we knew that we had to come in as a good neighbor and a community member, and to understand the needs of the community. Based on our research and understanding the community needs, we started to communicate in 2018 when we first arrived here," Morris said. "We were successful because we introduced our vision early on and people knew why we had to enter the market."
"What we did was listen to the community and conduct the research early on to understand that customer preference," Morris said. "Early on, it became evident that while OC is a big county with 3.2 million people, here relationships really matter. You have to be out there, you have to be talking to the community, you have to serve on boards, you've got to get involved. You can't just sit in a silo and design an entire cancer center and network of care by yourself, you must engage in the community," Morris said.
COH Orange County engaged the community by inviting community and business leaders, and potential patients, to offer feedback on the cancer center's mock design.
The organization went out "asking for their feedback, asking what mattered to them the most, and how they would envision the cancer center, so that if one day, whether they or their family members would receive a cancer diagnosis, how would they want their cancer center to be what are they looking for. Relationships matter and public relations and relationship building proceeded any marketing that we did," Morris said.
The organization also used data to find out the community members' needs, which included focus groups, marketing research, and analyzing data.
The organization found that 20% of Orange County's population leaves the county for advanced cancer care. "We know that Orange County has an aging population. Within the next 10 years, Orange County's average age of residents will increase by 18%, and we know that cancer increases with age. We knew that this was a population that was aging faster than any other part of the country, and that we needed to make sure that the right services were here for them," Morris said.
"We also know that there's rising breast cancer rates in Orange County compared to the entire country. So having the data behind us, understanding why the consumer was leaving the county for advanced care, understanding what was needed in this community, helped to drive our strategies that we implemented to make sure that the community needs were fulfilled," she added.
"We conducted baseline market research when we first entered the market about consumer preference, and we asked that question again just a couple of months ago. What we found is that we're ranked at the very top for preference and awareness of who City of Hope is, what services we're bringing to the community, and how we differentiate from our competitors. We're the number one cancer source for reporters, and there's a widespread acknowledgement of our core messages," Morris said.
"Our metrics are outstanding, and I do believe that this is a result of our strategic relationship building, layered in with a strong media strategy, and complemented by marketing and social media."
Thought leadership
COH Orange County is intentional in reinforcing its brand messaging through thought leadership. The organization puts executives and clinical leaders through extensive media training, Morris said. "It's about taking our leaders and building their platform, and helping them bring to the surface their voices so that they can share with the community the 'why' of City of Hope and why they're here."
"We work with each leader to understand the passion, the drive, and our differentiators, and how to share that across all audiences," she added. "Every leader starts with a message map, and we build our platforms from this map. My team looks at where we can best position the leader and the audience and respond to their key messages."
For example, the president of COH Orange County, Annette Walker, is an accessible thought leader. "Her platform is leadership and that's taken off. She's a frequent national spokesperson who inspires people to find their passion and become leaders in their fields. She ties City of Hope and our calling to lead us in pursuing this big vision. It's inspirational and reinforces the 'why' for all of us," Morris said.
When doctors join the organization, they also get trained on thought leadership.
"When we bring a new doctor onboard, we create introductory videos to help them talk about more than just their professional lives. It's getting them comfortable with the interviews, and this has been a good tool for starting to build their profile. When you go to a doctor, and especially with cancer being so personal and so scary, you want that expert, but you also want that compassionate care."
Through this thought leadership training, the clinicians and the staff become more relatable to the patients and their families and become a more personal and comfortable source.
"It's great that they have that expertise, but people need that compassionate care and that's what City of Hope is known for," Morris said.
Staying patient-centric
Another way COH Orange County utilizes marketing is through its patients' needs and personal stories.
"Every healthcare marketer needs to put their patient first; they need to listen to their patients and understand their needs," Morris said.
Healthcare marketing is different from other marketing, she said. It's more personal and closer to its consumers.
"It's important to listen, it's important to ask them, too, if they're willing to share their stories. With cancer, people need to hear that there is hope, and having a patient say that 'I've lived through it' is really powerful," she said.
"Patients are at the forefront of everything that we do. Understanding their needs, whether it's a design build, or whether it's sharing their testimony, or speaking at an event, whatever that may be, it's got to come from the patient because their experience and their testimony matters more than anyone else's voices."
Organization coordination
When it comes to the success of hospital and health system marketers entering into a new community, Morris says it's "a big job" and requires "tremendous organization coordination."
"It's so important to build teams that you trust, and be a collaborator yourself," she said.
Teams should have an open mind and be collaborative. "You also need to be comfortable with the unknown. It's about building a foundation, setting the structure, being comfortable with building and executing at the same time, being flexible in what your priorities are, and being willing to move quickly," Morris said.
"It's important to get to know your team. Especially with the pandemic, we need to take care of our teams because they've been through challenging times. You hear this from Annette as well; it needs to start at the leadership level. Annette is all about nurturing teams, building teams, leading teams, and making sure that her executive team takes that and shares that across all employees. It has to start from the top and then be carried throughout the organization," Morris said.
Just as the mission is important, so is acting on the mission. "It's about not only having the vision, but also being able to execute on the vision," she said. "Big ideas are great, but unless you can actually take that and bring it to life and make it happen, it's just all talk otherwise."
"This is probably the most exciting thing that I've ever done," Morris added. "Building something from the ground up and being able to bring City of Hope's mission, and our research, and our science into a new market that has growing needs, is so exciting. It's not easy and it requires certain personalities, but through it, there's great teamwork, and leaders emerge. I've seen my team excel, and we're excited about coming to Orange County."
Home healthcare services and nursing care facilities accounted for a majority of the gain.
The healthcare sector added 37,000 jobs in October, according to the newest Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report, issued Friday morning.
Most of the gain occurred in home healthcare services, which accounted for 16,000 added jobs. Nursing care facilities accounted for an additional 12,000 jobs.
Between September and October, ambulatory healthcare services saw an increase to 323,000 jobs, hospitals saw an increase to 110,000 jobs, and nursing and residential care facilities saw an increase to 237,000 jobs.
There were 16 million people attached to the healthcare sector workforce in October, BLS said.
While the job numbers are up this month, the healthcare sector has lost a total of 460,000 jobs since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in February 2020.
Total nonfarm payroll employment rose 531,000 in October, decreasing the overall unemployment rate 0.2 percentage point to 4.6 percent. Monthly job growth has averaged 582,000, and the number of unemployed people fell to 7.4 million, BLS reported.
The bureau also noted that 11.6% of employees teleworked in October because of the pandemic, which is 13.2% less than in September.
The BLS report accounts for employment in mid-October and can be subject to considerable revision.
In August, the change in total nonfarm payroll employment was revised to 117,000, and September was revised to 118,000, BLS reports. With these revisions, employment in August and September is 235,000 higher than was previously reported.
Indu Lew, PharmD, executive vice president and chief pharmacy officer at RWJBarnabas Health offers insights on what this year's flu season may look like, how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the pharmaceutical landscape, and offers leadership advice.
Editor's note: This conversation is a transcript from an episode of the HealthLeaders Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast. Audio of the full interview can be found here.
Indu Lew, PharmD, serves as executive vice president and chief pharmacy officer at RWJBarnabas Health, where she manages the health system's pharmaceutical supply chain and provides strategic leadership over the health system's 25 pharmacy divisions, spanning acute care and integrated services.
She's a pharmacist by background and has experience working in the pharmaceutical industry and direct patient care. Lew began her career journey as a pharmacy technician at the New Jersey-based health system, left to work in the industry, and came back to the health system to serve as a clinical pharmacist at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. She's also served as a biotechnology fellow and was promoted to director vice president, senior vice president, and most recently, as executive vice president.
In the newest Women in Healthcare Leadership podcast episode, Lew offers insights on a potential COVID-19 and flu"twindemic" we may face this fall, how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the pharmaceutical landscape, as well as shares her leadership style, and advice for future leaders.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What has been your experience leading as chief pharmacy officer during the COVID-19 pandemic? How has the pandemic affected the overall pharmaceutical landscape and the 25 pharmacy divisions that you oversee?
Indu Lew: One of the things that came to light is how integral pharmacy is in dealing with other divisions. The other thing we've seen is the resiliency of the pharmacy enterprise team with the other divisions. It was a difficult 2020. But the entire pharmacy enterprise came together with the sole purpose of ensuring that we were able to treat our patients appropriately.
What we found is that we needed to shift our way of thinking on how we manage supplies. We found ourselves at some critical medication shortages, and what we needed to do going further is we needed to ensure that we had the adequate supplies on hand. We do that now through a centralized warehouse.
HL: Recently The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases released data showing that 44% of adults in the U.S. are either unsure, or do not plan to get the flu vaccine for the 2021-2022 flu season, leading to a possible COVID-19 and flu "twindemic" later on this year. What factors could potentially lead us to this twindemic?
Lew: In 2020, the number of people being infected with flu were historically low. It was probably due to having good infectious disease practices. Because of the pandemic, we were masking better, we were social distancing, and we had good hand hygiene. When people were sick, we made sure that they stayed home. But what happens when we have low cases of flu, in general, is the people within the country have less natural immunity.
We know people are getting vaccinated with the COVID vaccine. But people are tired, they have pandemic fatigue. Hopefully what we won't see, is that people will mask less, social distance less.
Every year, the World Health Organization determines which virus will be included in the flu vaccine, and they essentially base it on a couple factors. They look at the viruses that have been circulating in the past two to three years, and they look at what's been circulating in the southern hemisphere in the current flu season. Public health officials don't have much to go on, because there hasn't been much flu circulating globally. Because they don't have much to go on, they're hoping that they're able to manage the flu better with the vaccine.
We're also still battling with the Delta variant of coronavius. We know the Delta variant is more contagious and more transmissible than the earlier virus strain. We know unvaccinated people are at greater risk. We've seen it within our hospitals. For people who are hospitalized due to COVID, a majority of them were unvaccinated.
We need to protect hospitalizations. We need to ensure that people are vaccinated. If they're vaccinated, it will decrease the potential strain that the healthcare system will see and will prevent this "twindemic" that could potentially happen. Vaccination is the key.
HL: In addition to ensuring vaccinations, what other steps can hospitals and health systems take to help curb COVID cases and flu cases during this upcoming flu season?
Lew: In conjunction with vaccinations, we have to ensure that people get tested because it'll guide you on the right path. If you do have COVID and you haven't been vaccinated, one of the key pieces that we found is you need to get to a site where they can give you a monoclonal antibody. Within our own health system, we've seen that we were able to avoid hospitalizations in 96% of the cases if they were treated with a monoclonal antibody.
The same thing goes for flu. If you have the flu, and you're tested early, then there are options for treatment that will shorten the intensity and the course.
HL: How would you describe your leadership style?
Lew: The most important piece of my leadership style is establishing a foundation of trust. If you, as a leader, establish a foundation of trust, people will come to you with new ideas and different ideas, and they won't be afraid.
If you establish that trust foundation, you then decrease the power distance. I trust the team, that they will come to me with innovative entrepreneurial types of ideas, and they trust that I will be able to clearly communicate what the strategic imperatives are. When you have that environment of trust, you're able to motivate them, you're able to inspire them, they won't be afraid of failing, and they won't be afraid to take a risk.
Within pharmacy, pharmacists are considered the most trusted profession. People place their care management in your hands as a pharmacist. So inherently, we go into the profession because we want to help people. We want to be a part of a team. We want to ensure that we are taking care of people.
HL: As a member of the Women's Leadership Alliance at RWJBarnabas Health, why do you think it is important for women to be leaders and to lift each other up?
Lew: It's so important that we grow women in healthcare leadership roles. We know that women make up a large majority of the healthcare workforce, right. We also know that women make up a large percentage of the purchase and usage decisions in healthcare. But we don't see a lot of women in healthcare leadership roles.
Women in healthcare leadership roles brings diversity to the playing field. Diversity enhances the overall functioning of the leadership team. Diversity brings better outcomes, more innovation, more creative solutions, and it allows to have different perspectives based on their experiences. But diversity needs to be purposeful.
RWJBarnabas Health recognizes the importance of diversity and having women at the table. Recently, the organization promoted six women of various backgrounds to the role of executive vice president, and with that promotion, they are now also included in the CEO's strategic counsel, and they're also included as members of the board.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who want to serve in leadership roles in the healthcare sector?
Lew: Do not be afraid to take a calculated risk. We cannot be afraid to step into a realm that we may not have experiences in. We have to be able to take that risk.
It is critical to develop connections and influences, both internally and externally. We need to look to see at the senior leadership level, who we'd be able to either take on as a mentee or who can we make those connections with to be a mentor.
It's critical to bring your own unique perceptions, your unique perspective to the conversation, and help shape that strategy.
The other thing is that if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's important to be lifelong learners. During the pandemic, we saw things changing so quickly. Decisions that were made in the morning, would change in the afternoon, because new information was flooding in. Unless you're a lifelong learner, it's difficult to be dynamic, it's difficult to be fluid.
The last important piece is that for any leader to motivate and inspire, to make decisive decisions, you have to listen. You have to listen to the members of your team. They will bring you new ideas, new innovations, as long as they trust that the environment that they're in is a safe environment.
Dana Erickson succeeds Craig Samitt, MD, who retired in May after leading for three years.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBS MN) and its parent company, Stella, have announced its new president and CEO.
Announced earlier this week, senior vice president and president of the health services division, Dana Erickson, will lead the organizations starting November 1.
Erickson joined Blue Cross in 2015 and has served in senior leadership positions since 2019. In her previous role, she led strategic planning, development, implementation, and administration of racial and health equity, care management, provider relations, pharmacy, and medical management for BCBS MN. Prior to that, she served as senior director of care management.
She has also served in clinical and leadership roles at Univita Health and Optum Health.
Erickson is also a registered nurse and respiratory therapist and has experience in direct patient care and leading rehabilitation center operations.
"Dana is an accomplished and impressive leader who knows the health care industry very well, both within Minnesota and across the nation," Michael Robinson, chair of the Board of Trustees for BCBS MN, said in a statement. "After a rigorous national search for our next CEO, we were thrilled to find the strongest candidates right here in Minnesota, with the right choice being inside our Blue Cross family."
Erickson succeeds Craig Samitt, MD, who retired in May after leading for three years. She will assume responsibilities from Kathleen Blatz, a former Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice and a Blue Cross Board of Trustees member for more than a decade, who has served as interim CEO since April.
"I am both humbled and excited for the opportunity to lead such an extraordinary company with exceptional, committed people," Erickson said in a statement. "We are strongly positioned to advance our strategic priorities to maintain and improve the health and wellbeing of our members, address inequities throughout the health care system and ensure that high-quality care and coverage are within reach for all."
Photo Credit: ST. PAUL, MN/USA - NOVEMBER 18, 2018: Blue Cross BlueShield Minnesota corporate entrance and logo. Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is a federation United States health insurance organizations. / Editorial credit: Ken Wolter / Shutterstock.com
CEO Alan Morgan, MPA, shares how COVID is continuing to affect rural communities and how rural health stakeholders can successfully target vaccine hesitancy in their communities.
Rural America has faced continued disparity in infection and death rates during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a recent study by the Rural Policy Research Institute, the COVID-19 death rate in rural communities is double the level of urban communities. In mid-October, rural counties, which make up 14% of the U.S. population, accounted for 25% of COVID-19 related deaths in the country.
A new initiative from the National Rural Health Association (NRHA) is looking to change that through vaccination efforts in rural communities.
The Rural Vaccine Confidence Initiative, which launched in September in conjunction with the Rural Health Clinic Conference, is a grassroots effort to increase vaccination rates across rural communities. Its focus is spreading awareness and education on a local level and utilizing community leaders to help spread the messaging.
Alan Morgan, MPA, who serves as CEO of the NRHA, spoke with HealthLeaders about the initiative, how COVID is continuing to affect rural communities, and how rural health stakeholders can successfully target vaccine hesitancy in their communities.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What is the ultimate goal of the initiative?
Alan Morgan: To save rural Americans.
COVID Is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban America. We're entering a new phase of the pandemic where we're seeing nationally the numbers decrease, but it's just not decreasing among rural populations.
As of Oct. 25, there was an 80% higher infection rate among rural Americans than urban. It's not surprising because while you've got 57% of the general population vaccinated, only 43% of rural America is vaccinated. You're seeing a situation where the rural populations, which are most at risk for COVID, have the lowest vaccination rates, and you're seeing the subsequent increase in both infections and mortality as a result.
Lower vaccination rates in rural communities are caused by many factors including cultural barriers among rural African American, Hispanic, and Latino communities; misinformation; lack of health access; and political messaging. These barriers are occurring among populations that are often times older with existing multiple chronic health conditions.
You'll continue to see that, and the danger is most people when they turn on national news and they see cases decreasing. They think, 'Oh, we're through with this.' People are going to be even more challenged trying to keep rural communities safe.
HL:How did the idea of this initiative come about?
Morgan: It was clear at the beginning of the year that from a communication standpoint, we were doing this wrong when it came to rural Americans. Sometimes, people view rural America as a small version of urban and it's not. It's a unique environment, and you need to approach it differently.
Early on, the messaging was that federal officials and health officials said you need to get vaccinated, and that is just a bad strategy. What we want to do is talk about this in a context that resonates with rural communities. Instead of the federal government saying you need to get vaccinated, let's talk about how to keep our community safe, how to keep our schools open, how to protect our small businesses, and changing that strategy to one of civic pride.
Part of that is recognizing the heightened risks that rural communities face. Rural communities have a greater percentage of their population older, sicker, and poorer, with fewer healthcare access points, and chronic health workforce shortages.
A lot of times, you hear communications talking about urban areas, and how do we keep those populations safe. There wasn't a discussion of why this is important, why it's relevant, and how do we talk about it from a rural perspective.
HL: A big part of this initiative is that it's a grassroots effort, where community leaders help play a role in the communication. How can rural hospital leaders support this initiative in their communities?
Morgan: In small towns across the U.S., rural hospitals are the largest employer, and in fact, healthcare is the largest employer in almost every rural county. When you talk about rural hospitals, you talk about their boards, and on their boards are business leaders, agriculture leaders, and members of the faith community, and those are the three key influencers that that need to be spreading the message.
We have found that the most successful strategy to date has been a local small-town clinician talking with their patients, saying, 'I know you. I know your family history. Here's why I think you need to get vaccinated.'
A large focal point in this is understanding that we're not going to make headway on relying on people from Washington, DC, we're going to need local leadership.
We've seen cases where that does work. Part of our effort is an ongoing basis. NRHA is currently recruiting "Pioneer Rural Hospital Messengers" who have agreed to track community vaccination rates while implementing our developed strategies and communication tools. We have identified rural hospitals that are implementing these new strategies, so we're real-time checking to see what works, what doesn't, and what initiatives work.
HL: How can rural hospital marketing teams utilize the communication toolkit to further drive the grassroots initiative?
Morgan: Small hospital marketing teams don't have the budgets that the large health systems do. So, we developed customizable tools, documents, and strategies, free of cost, that hospital marketing teams and communication teams can simply download, insert their own local information, and even bring in local leaders in the community, and plug them into these templates. It's just designed to make it so easy for them to have something that works in their community and is reflective of their own command.
Prior approval will once again be standard practice.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Monday that it will restore its practice of routinely restricting future acquisitions for parties that pursue anticompetitive mergers.
The FTC stated that "merger enforcement orders will once again require acquisitive firms to obtain prior approval from the agency before closing any future transaction affecting each relevant market for which a violation was alleged, for a minimum of ten years."
The new Prior Approval Policy Statement was released three months after the FTC rescinded the 1995 Policy Statement on Prior Approval and Prior Notice Provisions, which prevented the Commission from imposing merger restrictions.
"The FTC should not have to waste valuable time and resources investigating clearly anticompetitive deals that should have died in the boardroom," Holly Vedova, Director of the Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. "Restoring the long-standing prior approval policy forces acquisitive firms to think twice before going on a buying binge because the FTC can simply say no."
In conjunction, the FTC also announced a proposed order that would impose strict limits on future mergers by DaVita, Inc. According to an FTC complaint, the dialysis service provider's proposed acquisition of the University of Utah Health's dialysis clinics would create a monopoly in the greater Provo, Utah area.
Under the proposed order, DaVita would:
Divest three Provo-area dialysis clinics and provide transition services for up to one year
Be prohibited from entering into or enforcing any non-compete agreements with physicians that are employed by the University that would restrict their ability to work at a competitor's clinic
Be prohibited from entering into any agreements that restricts Sanderling Renal Services from soliciting DaVita's employees for hire
Be prohibited from directly soliciting patients who receive services from the divested clinics for two years
Have to receive prior approval from the FTC prior to acquiring new ownership interest in a dialysis clinic anywhere in Utah for the next decade
"DaVita has a history of attempting to buy up competing dialysis clinics in an industry that is already highly concentrated, in large part due to the acquisition activity of DaVita and other large dialysis clinic chains," Vedova said. "This is a big concern, and it is compounded by the fact that the limited number of nephrologists available to work at the clinics creates an opportunity for anticompetitive restrictions on labor. To address these concerns, the Commission’s order includes important provisions that guard against restrictions on worker mobility and protect Utah consumers from other anti-competitive practices in this critical, life-saving health care market."