Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, will retire from his position as CEO of Jefferson Health and president of Thomas Jefferson University at the end of the year.
Jefferson Health recently announced that leadership changes will be coming at the end of the year.
Stephen K. Klasko, MD, MBA, CEO of the health system and president of Thomas Jefferson University, will retire on December 31. He will remain as a special advisor to the Jefferson Board of Trustees through the 2022 fiscal year, with a focus on the organization's innovation and philanthropy pillars.
H. Richard Haverstick, Jr., emeritus board trustee, will serve as interim president and CEO beginning on January 1, while the board leads a national search for Klasko's successor.
Klasko, who has led the Philadelphia-based health system for the past eight years, is stepping down to focus on the reform of the American healthcare system and to "create a new system of health assurance which helps patients and families live their best lives," according to a press release.
"Dr. Klasko has been tireless in his entrepreneurial drive … [and] his commitment to diversity, inclusion, and community engagement," Patricia D. Wellenbach, Jefferson's board of trustees' chair, said in a statement. "His efforts in launching the Philadelphia Collaborative for Health Equity have made meaningful progress in addressing the health disparities of the city’s residents. We have an incredibly strong and dedicated management team to carry on the Klasko legacy, and we thank him for all he has done for Jefferson."
During his tenure, Klasko played a key role in the 2017 merger of Thomas Jefferson University and Philadelphia University. He also oversaw the health system expand from three hospitals to 18 since 2013, which grew annual revenues from $1.5 billion to more than $6.7 billion. He also led efforts in healthcare and telehealth access, and in 2014 JeffConnect® was established, creating one of the largest telehealth specialty services which became key in providing healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I am so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish at Jefferson. Our unique four-pillar model of academics, clinical, innovation, and philanthropy helped transform the organization into the innovative, entrepreneurial model we have today," Klasko said in a statement. "Our Board of Trustees took the bold step in 2013 to take the organization in a new direction, and I thank them, my management colleagues, and all of our Jefferson faculty, students and staff for all they have done to drive our success. I have been blessed to work alongside a group of trustees from 2013 to today that understand Jefferson’s incredibly important role in advancing education and health care for ALL Philadelphians."
Penny Wheeler, MD, shares the organization's succession planning and her decades-long career journey with the health system.
In September, Allina Health announced that Penny Wheeler, MD, who has served as CEO of the health system since 2015, will retire from her position at the end of 2021.
Wheeler will remain on the board while Lisa Shannon, who currently serves as president and COO of the Minneapolis-based health system, will succeed her.
A self-proclaimed "accidental CEO," Wheeler has served in several roles at Allina for decades, including working as a physician, and leading as president of the Abbott Northwestern Medical Staff, serving as CMO of the health system, and becoming the first physician and first woman to lead the organization.
In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Wheeler explained that her decision to retire was a combination of stage of life for her and Lisa Shannon's readiness to step up in the role.
"When you have somebody internally who's ready, you don't want to stand in their way or lose that person," she said. "Those all influenced it: stage of life for me, and the readiness of Lisa Shannon, who I felt very confident in moving forward and coming into this role."
Wheeler also shares the organization's succession planning and talks about her accomplishments during her decades-long career journey with the health system.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What was the organization's succession plan and how will you work with Lisa Shannon during this leadership transition?
Penny Wheeler: I recruited Lisa as a chief operating officer for our organization. It's hard to lead and run things at the same time, so her role was to help us run things and help us integrate things, and she did that exceptionally well.
In the background, our board was going through a process somebody called "a master class in succession planning." Every board meeting, HR, and comp committee meeting, we were bringing up anticipated needs, character traits, who internally might be a fit, and development plans for that person.
Lisa was running things and integrating at the same time we were looking at the succession pieces, and she was fitting the bill for all of those things. About a year and a half ago, she got a broader title of president because she addressed strategy, and because I wanted to get her in the running for CEO. It's been very methodical process and we have always been able to be direct with each other.
We're going to make sure that I finish my work, and she will get to her work. Part of that transition is about introducing her to a lot of external relationships that I have and things like that.
The fortunate thing is that I know what the role delineation should be between CEO and board. One of my favorite quotes about board service is, "you've got to get your arms around things without getting your fingers inextricably in them." I know enough to keep it at a governance level and not get into managerial decisions. I think that's a testimony to our relationship that I will continue in that role and that she is open to it.
I can tell you, too, the last thing people here need, after all that they have done and been through, is disruption in leadership. We're committed to a smooth leadership transition.
HL: What is the organization's COO succession plan?
Wheeler: Lisa is doing a little bit what I did. I flattened the organization to understand it well before I then decided what we needed in that role. She's going to take a look at that and over the next six months value it whether there's a replacement role or a different structure that's going to come into play there.
She's elevated a lot of our clinical talent. Without an MD sitting in this chair as CEO, she's done a methodical job of hiring a great chief medical officer, Hsieng Su, MD, and she has elevated many of the clinical positions around her. I'd say her top priority was elevating some of the clinical leadership and voices she needs in the organization, and then she is going to spend some time evaluating whether the COO role needs to be replaced or there needs to be something different.
HL: What are your priorities and what are you focusing on accomplishing before the end of the year?
Wheeler: I have to preface this with that I'm proud of the quality of care that these incredible 29,000 people give at Allina. We were named as one of the top fifteen health systems in the country by IBM Watson Health.
We are delivering high quality and have good performance, we have been moving in a direction where the most vulnerable, be they people have who have been traditionally left out because of race and ethnicity, or disability, or mental health issues, has been a focus of our organization. I'm proud of what we've done there and proud that we've moved toward getting rewards for outcomes.
Some of our biggest contracts now are rewarding us for how well we do things and how affordable, rather than how many. We have a huge contract with BlueCross BlueShield, we formed our own Allina Health Aetna plan, and we have payer partners that are transforming us to value.
When you get more contracts that reward you for outcomes, you better be good about how you serve the population instead of just reacting to them when they're sick. So, how do you keep them well? I've got quite a bit of experience as the previous chief clinical officer, so I'm helping with the population health initiatives as part of my priorities.
Another priority is on philanthropy. We are moving from site-based philanthropy to system-wide philanthropy because you can't solve a community-wide mental health crisis by doing things hyper-locally. You need both local and system initiatives, so I'm working on that.
I'm focusing on external relations and introducing Lisa to those external relationships.
Also, we're integrating some of our service lines, and there's some specific ones that I'm working on for our clinical service lines, primarily helping with cardiology.
HL: You've spent decades working at Allina Health, including serving as a physician and multiple leadership roles. What are some accomplishments you're proud of reaching during your tenure?
Wheeler: I'm proud of how we've dealt with the people who traditionally have been left behind. We've got a lot more to do. George Floyd was murdered eight blocks away from our headquarters. We knew there was work to do and we've deepened those efforts in several ways. We've looked at how can we be a better employer and encourage people, how can we be a better provider of care and eliminate health disparities and systemic racism. We got 32 other healthcare organizations to sign on to a diversity, equity, and inclusion pledge.
I'm proud of the people who work here. What they do for other human beings—despite the odds, the pandemic, the civil unrest, and even a shooting in our clinic that made us lose one of our care team members—is phenomenal.
I'm proud of how we've advanced care for the whole person. At Allina, we think healthcare is not just the absence of illness, but how you are doing socially, emotionally, and what connections to the community you have. I'm proud that we've dealt with things like health-related social needs and connected people to community-based resources when they're struggling with food insecurity, or transportation needs, or violence in their home. We've screened over half a million people for those needs.
Everything we do hangs off our desire to be about whole-person care and the decisions are made with that as our centerpiece.
HL: You were the first physician and woman to lead Allina Health. What has been your overall experience working in healthcare and leading the health system over the past seven years?
Wheeler: When I first came in as chief clinical officer 15 years ago, and I sat around the executive leadership team table, and I thought, "What did I do?" I left patients that I loved and the relationships that I've fostered and loved for 20 years, and now they were talking about things like enterprise risk management. It's changed since, but I was the only clinician in the executive leadership team, and I know and have learned from my patients what they value and need, and I know what it's like to try to scramble and take care of people as a physician. So, I hope I brought that in.
Ultimately, it's a privilege of a lifetime making a difference in people's lives, and it would have run hollow if I had other work that didn't matter so deeply and so purposefully as healthcare. I've been here for a long time; born in one of our hospitals, practiced for 20 years, on the leadership team for 15 years, and spent the last seven as CEO.
Healthcare executives share how their organizations have implemented a more diverse and inclusive space for their workforce and the community they serve, with results to prove it works.
Numerous hospitals and health systems have ramped up their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shined a spotlight on the glaring health inequities in the country, and the social unrest during 2020.
Alongside of this, healthcare leaders have become increasingly aware of how important it is to have a diverse workforce and C-suite that represents different perspectives in the workplace and reflects the diverse patient populations that an organization serves.
Three healthcare executives share how their organizations have implemented initiatives to create a more diverse and inclusive space for their workforce and the community they serve, with results to prove it works.
'Unwavering commitment'
RWJBarnabas Health, a comprehensive healthcare system in New Jersey, has been on its DEI journey for some time.
"One of the most exciting aspects of our journey to date has been the unwavering commitment and consistent progress we have made in advancing DEI strategies within our health system," Trina Parks, MHA, FACHE, executive vice president and chief corporate diversity and inclusion officer of RWJBarnabas Health, says.
The health system's corporate office of DEI was created in 2016. Its DEI team, which is led by Parks, has 11 diverse team members who focus on implementing systemwide DEI efforts.
"Since the inception, we have continued to harness a culture of inclusion and leverage the best of our employees to provide equitable and inclusive care to our patients and the communities we serve," Parks says. "As a DEI leader, and most importantly as a woman of color, I understand that this work can be uncomfortable."
Parks says this discomfort arises because the DEI team is addressing systemic racism and societal norms that have existed for centuries.
She adds, "It is also imperative for all employees, no matter the race, ethnicity, gender identity, or preferred spoken language, be seen and feel valued in every level of the organization. My job is to ensure that we can mitigate the risk of individuals feeling isolated or not enough."
Implementing diverse hiring practices
Following the tumultuous year of 2020, RWJBarnabas Health's CEO Barry H. Ostrowsky announced a systemwide initiative "Ending Racism, Together," which includes goals for patients, the workforce, communities, and operational processes "to identify and eliminate racism by modifying organizational structures, policies, practices, procedures and attitudes," Parks says.
"We ensure that these goals are communicated through partnerships with the system's DEI site leads in alignment with human resources leaders," she says. "We understand that we cannot accomplish change unless we adjust our lens; therefore, our DEI team has delivered and continues to deliver cultural competence and unconscious bias trainings to new and existing employees within our system."
As another best practice to promote a DEI culture among its employees, RWJBarnabas Health also requires that 50% of final leadership candidates, for director-level positions and above, are diverse in both race and ethnicity, she says. The health system also focuses on creating a workforce that represents the populations it serves.
In addition, Ostrowsky instituted an updated SBAR hiring practice (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) for the health system. This process ensures the promotion of DEI efforts in the workforce.
According to Parks, the SBAR process should include:
Utilizing a diverse array of resources for finding talent
The demographic breakdown of the candidate pool, including race and gender
The premise for which the hiring decision was made
The SBAR process is used for vice president–level and above leadership positions, and "it challenges the hiring manager to cast a wide net to ensure that the candidates are of a diverse pool," Parks says.
In addition to promoting race and ethnicity diversity in its hiring practices, the health system also focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity.
"We are proud to say that eight of our hospitals have been recognized as Leaders in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation," Parks says. "In addition to offering equitable policies and practices to our patients and visitors, this distinguished honor also contains inclusive practices for employees to identify with their current gender identity and preferred names and comprehensive benefits inclusive of gender-affirming surgeries and family planning resources."
Parks says that while diversity and equity work is important, diversity without inclusion is "ineffective and unsuccessful." To promote inclusion, the health system has over 30 affinity groups, which are employee-led groups or employee networks defined by shared characteristics and life experiences.
"In general, [these groups] provide support for our employees, foster career development, and contribute to cultural sensitivity in the work environment," Parks says.
RWJBarnabas Health measures its DEI successes quantitatively and qualitatively. "While success is measured through percentage changes in leadership demographics and the demographic makeup of employees, it is also measured in the respect and understanding of other cultures that we have seen at RWJBarnabas Health," she says. "It is also measured in having creativity and innovation, in which we continue to excel. In addition, our success is measured by less language barrier challenges faced by our patients and families, which we address through our impressive diverse workforce and best-in-class language interpretation and document translation services."
From 2017 to 2020, the health system saw a 21% increase in hiring women for leadership positions and a 6% increase in ethnic minority hiring, Parks says. Additionally, in 2020, 27% of internal promotions to assistant vice president and above identified as minorities, and 78% of those promoted were women.
'A marathon with an invisible finish line'
The challenges of incorporating DEI in an organization can be numerous, including the amount of work it takes to change thinking and culture.
"DEI execution continues to be a marathon with an invisible finish line," Parks says.
Creating and maintaining an environment where people are adapted to cultural humility is hard work, Parks says. "That often is a challenge because, as I like to mention, we are humans treating humans and, unfortunately, we don't always get it right. We all have unconscious and conscious biases that dictate our behaviors and responses."
The health system has a three-pronged approach to DEI for the workforce and the community; those prongs are awareness, exposure, and accountability to help the organization reach its destination. "Depending on the area of focus, [getting there] could be a quick race, a car ride, or like most times, an across-the-country bus ride, which requires patience and a much slower-paced approach, requiring collaboration and coordination. No one can do it alone."
While implementing DEI practices can be a big investment for organizations, Parks asks, "What is the expense and liability of not having a DEI leader and service line?"
"DEI touches every part of the business, including employee optimization, safety, quality, customer experience, community relations and partnerships, procurement, and population health," she says. "The investment associated with being visible, accessible, and trusted to be proactive and reactive in real-time is priceless."
She adds that this remains imperative to business when providing healthcare in a state as diverse as New Jersey.
"New Jersey is the fourth most diverse state in the country only behind California, Texas, and Hawaii. Diversity is not something we talk about, it is how we live," Parks says.
Leading with HEART
Focusing on DEI efforts in the workforce is not a new undertaking for Luminis Health, a nonprofit community health system headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland.
"We've been on this deliberate and intentional journey since 2015," Victoria W. Bayless, CEO of Luminis Health, says. "At that time, we were signing on to the American Hospital Association's #123forEquity Pledge to Act."
The pledge aimed to eliminate healthcare disparities and called for hospitals to do four things, Bayless says:
Use race, ethnicity, and language data to measure disparities in care or clinical outcomes
Increase diversity of leadership and governance
Focus on cultural competency training
Create deep community partnerships
Specifically related to the cultural competency training, Luminis Health's focus evolved to include cultural humility, listening, and learning, and evaluating the strengths the organization gains from its diverse leadership and workforce, according to Bayless.
The health system also focuses heavily on measurement success in its DEI initiatives for its workforce, she says. "Measurement was important in terms of the makeup of our boards, the makeup of our leadership team, [and] we put the Rooney Rule in place."
The Rooney Rule, originally a policy the National Football League put in place to require that team leagues interview and consider diverse candidates, has been adopted into hiring policies at numerous organizations, including hospitals and health systems.
Luminis Health measures DEI initiatives with dashboards that track hiring practices, promotions, disciplinary actions, aggregate diversity, and diversity of job classifications. A DEI scorecard was implemented in March 2018. By the end of June 2020, the diversity of Luminis Health's clinical professionals grew from 33% to 40%, the diversity of management grew to 26%, and the diversity of executive leadership grew from 14% to 17%. Diversity in new nurse hires also grew from 19% in March 2018 to 38% in June 2020.
Reflect the community you serve
Luminis Health found that to successfully create a diverse workforce, it had to implement DEI throughout the whole organization and its community. The health system's DEI efforts ramped up following the murder of George Floyd and the resulting social unrest in May 2020, Bayless says. This is where Luminis Health's focus on anti-racism "leveled up."
"We're certainly proud of the work we did and having won the Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award [in 2019] from the American Hospital Association," she says. "But it wasn't enough."
In 2021, the governing board doubled down on its focus on DEI, and added anti-racism and social justice efforts, Bayless says, making its focus on DEAIJ (diversity, equity, anti-racism, inclusion, and justice).
"We need to be reflective of the community that we're serving. We need to be inclusive in our workforce," Bayless says. "When people see employees, nurses, doctors, techs, pharmacists, housekeepers, engineers, people who look like them and are from similar backgrounds, they feel more welcomed in organizations as patients."
The governing board has also created a Health Equity and Anti-Racism Task Force, or HEART Force, to address DEI in the workforce and in the community. The HEART Force, led by some of the health system's trustees, includes people in the community, the workforce (nonclinical staff), patient and family advisors, and medical staff, Bayless says. On June 11, the group rendered its set of recommendations to the governing board, she adds, which has 10 recommendations categorized under the following three focus areas:
Be an anti-racist organization
Partner with diverse communities
Integrate accountability and measurement
The health system also hired Tamiko Stanley in 2017 as director and head of DEI. She was recently promoted to vice president and chief DEI officer, where she sits in human resources but "has a broad view of the organization, not just on the workforce side, but also facilitating and supporting the work in the clinical arena and patient care," Bayless says.
The healthcare organization also formed several business resource groups for various cultures and identities, Bayless says. That includes an LGBTQIA group, an African American group, and a Latino group, so that people in the organizations "have a group of colleagues where they can share and learn."
The health system also created voluntary forums for team members across the organization to share their own experiences about equity and justice, she says. This has included work around the books White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which has created a safe space for staff to come together and communicate about difficult subjects, including personal dealings with racism.
Luminis Health also created a Coming to the Table chapter, where team members can "encourage dialogue and learning around the history around racism and discrimination, and that people can listen and learn from each other," Bayless says. "We were the first hospital health system in the country to form our own chapter of Coming to the Table," creating a more inclusive and communicative culture.
She adds that some of the conversations are "deeply personal experiences of people who have experienced discrimination and who have grown from it, or who many are continuing to suffer from it."
The organization also implemented a creative interactive theater group in addition to cultural competency training, where the group acts out scenarios that demonstrate real-life situations that have happened at Luminis Health where there's been discrimination or inappropriate use of language, Bayless says.
"[Following the presentations], we react to it, and we have a dialogue about the skit, whether it was a manager being insensitive, inappropriate use of language, somebody singled out, people applying stereotypes, making assumptions about people because of the way they look, talk, dress, etc. It's a little more interesting than just doing 'mandatory training,' [and] that's made it more lively," she says.
The organization has made significant investments in DEI throughout the system. "I don't have an exact figure for you, but it is a major investment," she says. "It gets woven into the organization, rather than it's a budget that sits discretely off to the side."
Vision 2030
Implementing DEAIJ into the health system's work has become a part of Luminis Health's DNA. "It's reflected in our values," Bayless says.
The health system crafted a new strategic mission for the next decade called Vision 2030, with a focus on community, wellness, and experience for the workforce and the patients they serve.
"The vision speaks to our mission, values, and what we want to be in the long term," she says. "That vision statement includes that Luminis Health will become a national model for health equity, anti-racism, inclusion, diversity, and justice."
Anne Arundel Medical Center and Doctors Community Medical Center merged in 2019, then rebranded in 2020 as Luminis Health to unify the organization. Since then, the healthcare system has acquired another hospital and opened a new mental health hospital, Bayless says.
"For Luminis Health, we have a collective set of values now that honor and respect the legacy organizations but also pull us together as a system," she says. "Those values are the acronym RISE, which stands for Respect, Inclusion, Service, and Excellence. It is important for us to be focused on that, that every voice matters, and that those set of values needs to drive the behaviors that we exhibit regularly."
The organization has also implemented specific goals in its annual operating plan for quality, community service, and workforce development, Bayless says. It will further infuse the goals with the elements of the HEART Force recommendations to ensure those recommendations receive action.
"We don't want to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion as some side gig," she says. "It needs to be part and parcel of all the work that we're doing. [It's] infused in all of the work that we're doing. There are layers of goal setting and measurement that we've been deliberate about."
'Resist the resistance'
When it comes to implementing DEI initiatives into your own organization, Bayless says that an open mind is key.
"We changed our procedures and how we go about recruitment, and there was some resistance to that [because it's different]," she says. "Sometimes people just don't like change. They don't want their process to be slowed down by having to take these 'extra steps,' but in the long run, the benefit is greater diversity, more inclusiveness, the diversity of ideas, backgrounds, interests that come to the table and can make us a stronger organization."
Bayless adds that a trustee once told her, "You have to have the strength to resist the resistance."
When it comes to wanting to make steps in DEI, the whole organization must be committed, Bayless says. "It has to start at the top," she adds. That includes the CEO, the governing board, and the executive leadership.
"You have to be truly committed to it; you have to measure; you have to be willing to make the investment. You can't just say it's important but then not put any resources or time and attention to it. If it doesn't show up in your annual operating plan and you're not measuring it, you're not really doing it."
Ensuring DEI Is in the DNA
Highmark Health and Allegheny Health Network is a nonprofit integrated delivery network, headquartered in Pittsburgh, with a deep focus on workforce and community DEI initiatives.
"[DEI] goes directly to our mission, which is to ensure that people have a remarkable healthcare experience and they're free to be their best," says Robert James, JD, MBA, MHA, chief diversity and inclusion officer for Highmark Health.
According to James, research shows that diversity in a clinical care workforce improves health outcomes for the community it serves, which is why the payer-provider organization is building DEI best practices, including utilizing the Rooney Rule for interview panels; tracking metrics; and setting goals.
"We're looking at initiatives to stem turnover. We are adopting mentor and protégé programs into our hiring process, all across the organization for almost all of our positions," he says. "Our goal is to reflect the customers, members, and our patients so that we can provide them with the best products, services, and experiences."
Having a diverse workforce brings new ideas and fresh perspectives into the workplace, he says. It also allows for innovation, which makes the organization a more competitive and valuable commodity to its customers.
Partnering with the community
As part of Highmark Health's DEI efforts, it is partnering with its community to create a diverse workforce pipeline for its own organization and other community organizations.
Earlier this year, Highmark Health announced it would commit $1.5 million to increase diverse leadership in Pittsburgh through The Advanced Leadership Institute (TALI Institute), a new nonprofit organization to help build pipelines for African Americans to executive leadership positions in and around Pittsburgh.
"It's part of our goal of aligning on corporate giving with our DEI initiatives. TALI is a program that was started by a former senior executive at Highmark, who saw disparity in the number of black senior executives in the city of Pittsburgh and decided to form an organization that would help mitigate that disparity," James says.
The executive then developed a training program associated with Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business "to train executives who were mid-level executives to prepare for senior and C-level executive roles in companies," he adds.
TALI has had three cohorts so far, James says, and about 80% of the participants have either received a promotion or have added significant higher-level assignments to their work responsibilities.
"At this point about 80 participants have graduated from cohorts in TALI. The $1.5 million goes to help ensure the institute will be around in the years to come and can continue to build a bench of ready mid-level executives to ascend to the senior levels, and now they've expanded to include a program for supervisors and managers as well," he says.
James adds that, "There's no program like it in the United States, and Highmark was there from the beginning as one of the anchor sponsors and has continued to be there as a sponsor at the highest levels to try to combat this disparity here in Pittsburgh."
Additionally, Highmark has implemented numerous other initiatives within the past year:
Highmark Health hired Margaret Larkins-Pettigrew, MD, MEd, MPPM, FACOG, to serve as Allegheny Health Network's first chief clinical DEI officer
Additionally, two VP leaders, one of whom is James, were hired under Dr. Larkins-Pettigrew
Pettigrew to support DEI initiatives across Highmark's affiliate companies
The organization consolidated all its DEI initiatives under one blended organization and called it an "innovative next practice," to ensure that DEI is being evaluated and implemented across the entire
enterprise
"Most companies maintain their DEI initiative under their HR department. DEI isn't embedded anywhere else in their organization," James says. "The way that we decided to structure ourselves is going to allow us to ensure that DEI is going to be a part of how we approach things [in all departments]."
The DEI team created an Enterprise Institute of Equitable Health, where they developed a six-pillar framework to address social justice, equity, and structural racism, as well as "the other '-isms' that exist, including sexism," James says.
The six-pillar framework includes the following action items:
Educate
Innovate
Investigate
Advocate
Disseminate
Invigorate
Additionally, Highmark Health is bringing in an outside organization to survey the entire enterprise and obtain a sense of where the organization is on its DEI journey, James says. The health system will also conduct "inclusivity resets" where each workforce team unit will determine its members' sense of belonging and inclusion.
"Our goal is to ensure that each unit be able to have a sense for what would they like us to look like at the end of the day and in terms of that sense of belonging and sense of inclusion," he says. "We are hitting the reset button when it comes to inclusion across our enterprise, and we'll also ensure that each business unit has a champion that will train the rest of the team and they will engage in train-the-trainer unconscious bias training."
The workforce will also have opportunities to engage in book clubs and meetings related to DEI, where they will learn about structural racism and the data behind structural racism, so that they understand it exists and action can be taken to correct it, he says.
In addition to the TALI Institute, Highmark Health also developed other intentional pipeline programs to hire more diverse nursing and clinical care staff. The organization created a program called White Coats for Black Professionals with a grant, where the organization will pay back the loans for trainees, doctors, and nurses. Allegheny Health Network has also partnered with the Community College of Allegheny County to support nurses with diverse backgrounds. The organization also established a new partnership with Inroads, a 50-year-old pipeline organization, to help attract students and alumni from historically black colleges and universities, as well as Hispanic-serving institutions, he says.
[sub-subhed] 'No matter where you are in our enterprise, you're going to feel welcome'
James says, "You have to have buy-in from the top" when it comes to implementing DEI work into your organization. "Our CEO is our biggest champion on diversity, equity, and inclusion," he adds. "It's one of the top priorities of our company."
"Through the Enterprise Institute of Equitable Health, we are not just moving forward at the top, but we are embedding it across our enterprise at all different levels," James adds. "No matter where you are in our enterprise, you're going to feel welcome, a sense of belonging, and included in our company."
The organization's broad array of DEI initiatives in 2021 aim to ensure that DEI is in its DNA, he says.
"When I look at the successes we've had over the years, we've had successes with our veterans, our LGBTQ community, and for people with disabilities," he says.
Highmark Health has received awards from the Human Rights Campaign, including winning Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality for three consecutive years.
"Every company should have a degree of diversity at the table," he says.
In April 2022, Steve Mackin will succeed Lynn Britton in leading the integrated healthcare system, which serves communities in Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas. Following the transition, Britton will become executive chair of Mercy's board of directors.
"In addition to a robust succession plan, Mercy is very intentional about mapping out new strategies and innovations in health care," Britton said in a statement. "Today, we are fully engaged with Mercy’s Strategy 2025 which will continue to transform health care, so we get it right for the people we serve. As a member of our senior leadership team, Steve played an integral part in the design of this strategy and I am confident he and our entire Mercy team will continue to innovate new ways of providing compassionate care and exceptional service to our communities and patients, just as our Sisters envisioned for Mercy."
Britton, who has served as president and CEO of Mercy for the past decade, will closely work with Mackin over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition.
"I have had the privilege and honor to serve under Lynn and learn servant leadership firsthand," Mackin said in a statement. "I am humbled by the board’s decision and I will work diligently to serve our co-workers, patients and communities in a way that reflects our Sisters’ legacy – a bias for action, dignity, hospitality, right relationships and fullness for life."
Mackin joined Mercy in March 2017, and currently serves as executive vice president for the health system, and president of Mercy Hospital St. Louis. He also leads as a senior executive for business line development with an initial focus on cancer services in Mercy's eastern region.
Prior to joining Mercy, he served as a senior leader at Cancer Treatment Centers of America for nearly two decades.
During his 22-year leadership tenure, Lloyd Dean has been a leading voice in health equity.
CommonSpirit Health has announced that its CEO, Lloyd Dean, will retire during the summer of 2022.
Dean originally served as CEO of Dignity Health for 19 years before the organization merged with Catholic Health Initiatives to create CommonSpirit Health in February 2019. He then served as co-CEO alongside Catholic Health Initiatives CEO, Kevin Lofton, until he was appointed sole CEO of the Chicago-based organization in July 2020.
Since then, Dean has led the $30 billion system with more than 1,500 care sites and 140 hospitals across 22 states, to establish it as "a national leader in healthcare."
"When I started my journey in health care 35 years ago, I never imagined it would take me to Catholic Healthcare West, Dignity Health, and now CommonSpirit Health," Dean said in a LinkedIn post. "After all this time, I’m still amazed at how blessed I have been to do such important work with exceptional and inspirational colleagues and partners, especially in light of the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic."
During his leadership tenure, Dean has been a leading voice in health equity and has led numerous initiatives, which include:
Addressing social determinants of health and removing barriers to access of care and advancing social justice
Establishing a 10-year, $100 million partnership between CommonSpirit Health and Morehouse School of Medicine to train Black doctors to create a more diverse and dynamic workforce
Contributing to the passage of the Affordable Care Act as an "outspoken advocate" and partnering with the President Obama Administration and Congressional Leaders to rally support of the bill
Establishing Dignity Health as the leading Medicaid provider in California
Establishing CommonSpirit Health as one of the leading Medicaid providers in the country and becoming a national leader in value-based care
"I’m looking forward to the next chapter, but my work at CommonSpirit is not done yet," Dean stated. "In the coming months, I will remain focused on our continued integration as a single organization to achieve better outcomes and improve the health of those we serve, especially the vulnerable."
A search committee has been established by the CommonSpirit board, which will work to identify Dean's successor prior to his departure.
Kathy Winn, MBA, FACHE, vice president of strategic marketing at LifePoint, shares how the organization's marketing strategy operates with its mission at the forefront.
LifePoint Health is a national health system that operates a network of hospitals, post-acute services providers, and outpatient centers across 30 states.
Although the Brentwood, Tennessee-based organization has a large footprint, it unites all of its services under one singular mission: Making Communities Healthier®.
During an interview earlier this year, the organization's CEO, David Dill, spoke about how LifePoint continued to operate with its mission at the forefront, even during the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kathy Winn, MBA, FACHE, vice president of strategic marketing at LifePoint, recently spoke with HealthLeaders about how the health system's marketing strategy also operates with the organization's mission at the forefront and helps to continue to drive the mission during the pandemic.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: How does the health system strategically use marketing to drive its mission?
Kathy Winn: From an organizational perspective, everything that we do in the marketing space ties back to our mission. We have hospitals and care centers across the United States, and so while we have standard approaches to marketing and engaging consumers in a conversation about taking their health into their own hands, it is localized in each of our markets to make sure that we're speaking to the individuals in each of those unique communities.
HL: How has the health system utilized research to ensure it's meeting the needs and addressing fears of the patients across its large footprint?
Winn: Research is something that we use every day; we're a data driven organization.
In our markets across the country, we rely on specific consumer perception surveys in each of those markets to help us identify what's important to our neighbors and friends in those communities.
We align it with data and clinical research on the backside to make sure that we're providing the right kind of approach in our communities to engage individuals in a conversation about their health. Each community is a little bit different in terms of what they want to focus on. Our research in each of those communities helps us identify how we can engage those consumers and make sure that we're talking to them about healthcare in the same language that they want to hear it.
HL: What strategies have you utilized to promote COVID-19 vaccination across the health system?
Winn: In the beginning of the pandemic, we started with a message of support for our healthcare heroes. We started with one campaign that talked about how we could help support our healthcare heroes. We transitioned that to talk about the importance of vaccines; to support healthcare heroes, we need to make sure we're all getting our vaccines and promoting that in our communities.
Today, we are continuing with a strong and consistent message that is trying to lead to reducing COVID-19 vaccination hesitancy. We want our leaders in the community, whether that's our nurses, clinicians, or administrative leaders, to lead by example. We have toolkits that we've provided to them that have information around vaccine education. We enlist these local leaders as vaccine heroes, so that's where the continuation of our campaign has come into place. It's more of a grassroots approach. We provide the creative and the messaging platform, but we're trying to engage our local leaders to be that delivery point for our communities.
HL: How are you utilizing marketing strategies to recognize LifePoint professionals during the pandemic?
Winn: We are a large organization, and we do rely a lot on what that experience is like locally. From an organizational perspective, we have a lot of different strategies, both from a marketing and communication standpoint, in terms of providing support to our staff and making sure that we help them through this challenging time.
There are some operational strategies that we implement on the backside to support our employees every day, but what we found to be impactful and meaningful for our employees is the local community support that has come into play. Everything from food donations, mask donations, parades through the parking lot, prayer services in our parking lots—the communities have found ways to help support our team members across the country.
Our impact right now is to help our marketing teams in the field to amplify those voices. It's also sharing those good messages across the entire organization. We're an incredibly large and complex organization, but we have a great network through our leadership and through our markets, so sharing those opportunities to celebrate wins is impactful and important at this point, and that's what our role is during this time.
HL: With widespread misinformation about COVID, how does LifePoint communicate accurate information to its patients and communities?
Winn: We partner with the communications team to help support the messaging that goes out into our communities. For us, it's about maintaining that steady drumbeat of strong, consistent messaging about the need for vaccinations and masking.
One thing that's interesting about LifePoint is that we have locations across the country, and so they're all in different spaces when it comes to seeing different COVID surges in our communities. What is impactful about LifePoint as an organization is that with our marketing and communication support teams, and the tools that we have deployed to our markets, we can pivot quickly. We can make decisions quickly and meet the needs of the community.
Being a part of our larger organization, having all those robust tools, helps our teams in the field to be able to focus on patient care, so they don't have to spend their time creating new messaging and trying to figure out how to communicate effectively. We can help support that on the backside so they can make sure that they have the bandwidth to take care of our friends and neighbors in the communities they serve on the front side.
HL: What other strategic marketing innovations are you leading?
Winn: One-on-one engagement with consumers is an exciting opportunity from a marketing standpoint. To be able to talk to individuals about what's important to them in the right messaging, and the right tone, in the right vehicle, that's an opportunity that we're constantly driving for. We're making sure we have the right message at the right time to the right person.
From a digital health perspective, that's been a big focus for us. Innovation and strategy are part of our organization's core pillars to try to find new ways to engage with patients and remove barriers to access care. We have some exciting new partnerships that we've announced recently related to patient care.
We've got the Healthy Patient Program with our partners at Aeon. We have a new partnership with a company called Cadence that's going to be remote patient monitoring, which is going to be impactful for a subset of consumers. We're looking for ways to build on each of those technology-driven advancements, and how they can make our communities healthier. While those may be more technology driven, there's certainly a marketing component to it because it's all in the way that we message, educate, and engage our consumers around those digital strategies. Everything from telehealth, to online scheduling, to remote patient monitoring, to texting and engaging with patients in the way that they want to be engaged with, we're going to continue to see incredible advancements in that space within the walls of LifePoint.
Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, president of clinical care for Providence, shares the health system's COVID-19 learnings, how to improve patient safety and quality, 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 foundhere.
Amy Compton-Phillips, MD, has only ever wanted to serve in healthcare. Thirty years ago, she started a practice on the East Coast. In 1993, she joined Kaiser Permanente as a front-line internist. Over her 22-year tenure, she worked as a physician and moved through a variety of administration roles, eventually serving as the physician director of population care, then finally as chief quality officer for the Oakland, California-based health organization.
In 2015, Compton-Phillips joined Providence as the president of clinical care. Among leading healthcare and value outcomes at the Seattle, Washington-based health system, she also led the treatment for the first confirmed COVID-19 patient in the country.
In the newest Women in Healthcare Leadership podcast episode, Compton-Phillips shares the organization's COVID-19 learnings, how to improve patient safety and quality, and offers leadership advice.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What are the major learnings that the health system has hung on to since the first COVID-19 patient was admitted to Providence Regional Medical Center Everett in Washington State in January 2020?
Amy Compton-Phillips: The key lesson was that planning is the antidote to panic. When that first patient hit us, fortunately we had been working with our infection prevention team and our infectious disease clinical decision team monitoring the breakthrough infection in Wuhan, China.
We learned that we had to have a sensing system around the globe after Ebola. We knew we would need to be ready. In fact, because of the breakout infection in Wuhan, we'd even been doing drills at some of our facilities, including at our Everett hospital, to be ready for, when and if, the infection came to the U.S.
When the first patient came in, the nurse practitioner who this patient originally came to, was prepared when he said that he had been in Wuhan, China, and had a fever and a cough. She called the CDC and said, 'What do I do?' That person who saw the patient in the clinic knew to be prepared.
The patient had gone home and then came back to the hospital when the test came up positive, and the entire hospital infrastructure, from the EMTs, to the people in the emergency room, to the people in the clinic, were ready. They calmly were able to handle this person with the breakthrough infection. Back in those early days, we treated every person like they had Ebola, with incredibly high-level infection prevention processes in place. Not very long after that, we had patients on cruise ships that were needing places to go get care, and we also provided facilities for those patients.
We started designing a very patient-centric, person-centric way for people to access care if they had COVID. That kind of human-centered design thinking is what has absolutely stuck with us since then, that if we think about it from our consumers', our patients', and our neighbors' perspective, how do we make sure that we make intentional decisions in the healthcare system to be ready for how people want to use our system.
The third key learning is that teams matter. We had quickly, like the rest of the planet, shut things down. We went on to video capability, but because we realized that we were all working alone, we had to be intentional about staying connected. We set up a series of huddles. Initially they were every day, then we'd have workgroups during the day, then we'd have our Emergency Operations Center connecting back in the evening again.
HL: What can hospitals and health systems do right now to improve their patient safety and quality and expand it in the post-COVID world?
Compton-Phillips: COVID has given us time to think, and pause, and imagine differently than we would have without it. Very often, if you look back in history, pandemics have been threshold events. There's the before and after.
There's the before and after the Black Death. It truly changed the way the society of the Middle Ages moved through the world. The 1918 flu and World War I was happening at the same time, too, but between World War I and the 1918 flu, we went from this era when the world was at war and fighting amongst itself to the roaring 20s, where the future seemed bright.
As we think about the capacity for the pandemic to serve as a threshold event, now is the time for us to be doing the small tests of change to make a healthcare system that's much more distributed, much more equitable, much more focused on getting care to where people live, work, and play. That's exactly what we need to be focused on for the next five years, because my suspicion is in 2030, healthcare is going to look very different than the way it does today.
Look at what happened with the regulations on telehealth. The regulator's realized that if we didn't enable telehealth, and we didn't have some kind of way to reimburse for telehealth and simplify the regulations on where providers sit compared to where patients sit, that we wouldn't have had any healthcare at all during the pandemic.
When they realized that and they took away the hurdles that regulatory environments can create, it helped innovation blossom. I hope that now as we move forward, that the regulatory environment and healthcare providers together agree on a few simple rules, but allow for some experimentation, and innovation, and new models of care so that we can take advantage of the incredible digital and technological innovations that are out there. We have to enable innovation, otherwise we're going to keep getting stuck doing the same things over and over again.
HL: What originally drew you into working in the healthcare sector as a physician?
Compton-Phillips: I never wanted to do anything else. I think there's a lot of doctors and nurses who were born to be in the profession that they're in, and I'm one of those. From the time I was in kindergarten, I never had an answer that was different than 'I want to be a doctor,' when people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up.
HL: What has been your experience working as a woman in clinical care leadership?
Compton-Phillips: My suspicion is it's not all that far off of any human being who is working as a clinical care leader. Although I do think that it has evolved over the past 30 years.
One thing that is different is that if you look at the healthcare workforce, it's about 75% women, the healthcare leadership is not approaching that. It is, fortunately, getting closer and closer to 50% women.
For women as well as people of color, who have different styles and different backgrounds, we must create room for opportunities, training, and mentorships to help get them in the C-suite. We need to recognize and create the capacity and the ability for people who look different than those that came before to lead into the future. We will get more innovation and a more vibrant community when we do that.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who want to serve in leadership roles in the healthcare sector?
Compton-Phillips: Something that I think is different between women of my generation and men of my generation, is there is a different approach to leadership, that at least it seems to be in my observation, that when there is a big job to be done, I often see men raising their hand, and I often see women waiting to be asked. Even in my career, I've taken jobs because people reached out to me, I can't think of any job that I've taken because I reached out and asked for a different job or asked for help.
If we're a leader looking for women to lead something, or looking for a person of color, or somebody who's not used to taking point on a project, we need to be looking around for leadership and asking folks to step up, inviting them in to lead, and not just waiting for people who raise their hands. It's an important way for us to continue to develop leaders that do look outside of what we might have traditionally seen as a leader in the past.
Steve Davis, MD, MMM, will succeed Michael Fisher in November.
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center announced on Monday that it has chosen a new CEO.
Steve Davis, MD, MMM, who has served as the health system's COO for the past six years, will begin to lead the organization on November 22.
Davis will succeed Michael Fisher, who has served as president and CEO for over a decade, making him the longest-serving CEO of the organization. In April, Fisher announced his plan to retire.
"I’m grateful to have had the privilege of leading the incredible team at Cincinnati Children’s, whose care for kids and commitment to scientific research and education has made this one of the best medical centers in the world," Fisher said in a statement. "I’m extremely pleased that the board has selected an exceptional leader in Dr. Steve Davis as the next CEO. Having worked closely with Steve for the last six years, I can tell you that he has high integrity, an innovative spirit, and a deep caring for patients and his fellow employees."
During his tenure as COO, Davis served as interim CEO for six months during 2018. He also led the construction of the Critical Care Building, the medical center's largest expansion, set to open in November. During the pandemic, he played a significant role in coordinating the response of local hospitals, as well as creating policies and procedures to safeguard patients and hospital workers.
Prior to joining Cincinnati Children's Davis served as COO of Hillcrest Hospital, which is a part of the Cleveland Clinic health system. He also served in numerous leadership positions at Cleveland Clinic between 1996 and 2015.
"I came to Cincinnati Children’s because I want to change the world of healthcare – for children in Cincinnati and beyond," Davis said. "I envision a world where all children can reach their full potential – where racial and economic disparities have been eliminated, and where the ZIP code you were born in doesn’t shorten your life expectancy or quality of life."
He added, "Our clinical excellence, focus on safety and improvement, and deep research experience is unmatched. Our collaborative spirit provides the space for each of us to learn, grow, and thrive. It is a remarkable organization, and I am proud to work here."
The nonprofit health plan's advertising campaign, titled "Hear Me," will feature Williams among several other women who will address topics including race and gender biases in healthcare.
Blue Shield of California recently announced a new collaboration with entrepreneur, equality advocate, and tennis star, Venus Williams, to address the implicit biases and systemic inequities still found in healthcare.
The nonprofit health plan's advertising campaign, titled "Hear Me," will feature Williams among several other women who will address topics including race and gender biases in healthcare.
"For groups, including but not limited to, women, people of color, immigrants, and low-income populations, accessing and receiving the care they need and deserve can be challenging," Jeff Robertson, senior vice president of consumer growth and chief marketing officer at Blue Shield of California, said in a statement. "We are proud to be working with tennis icon and activist Venus Williams in addressing the implicit biases and systemic inequities that persist in health care today."
Williams will collaborate with Blue Shield of California over the next year to bring awareness to issues such as mental health, black maternal health, fitness, wellness, and Sjogren's Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder she was diagnosed with in 2011.
"I am deeply passionate about prioritizing health and well-being, so joining the Blue Shield of California team on this campaign was an easy decision," Williams said in a statement. "I look forward to advocating on issues that I truly believe will not only uplift women, but also shed light on matters that affect entire families and communities."
The "Hear Me" campaign is part of Blue Shield's larger "Who We Stand For Sets Us Apart" advertising campaign, which celebrates the strengths and accomplishments of women, and features a four-time Special Olympics USA Gymnastics Champion, a Latina trauma nurse, a military veteran, and a ballet dancer in her 60s.
Warren Moore, FACHE, shares his experience settling into his new role as COO and future strategies he's looking forward to implementing to help workers in the organization and the patients they serve.
Warren E. Moore, FACHE, joined Inspira Health Network as executive vice president and COO in July. A healthcare veteran with more than 25 years of healthcare experience, he brings high reliability and quality care experience to his new role.
In his role as COO, Moore will lead the New Jersey-based health system's strategic growth strategy, and oversee the hospitals, health centers, and outpatient services operations, under the leadership of president and CEO, Amy Mansue.
During his first 90 days, he has had a strong focus on community, inside the organization and out. Earlier this week, Moore spoke with HealthLeaders about his experience settling into his new role and future strategies he's looking forward to implementing to help workers in the organization and the patients they serve.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: How have you worked together with Amy Mansue and other executives to get settled in your new role?
Warren Moore: I've had the pleasure of working with Amy for over 15 years in our past life. Amy's honestly a huge part of why I'm here. She and I share our vision and values, and how we look at our role as healthcare leaders. That focus is on the communities we serve, how do we assist them in bettering the community, and focusing on the health status of that community.
We also both share the value that our employees, from our medical staff to all of our employees in our organization, are the key to what we do. We deliver service that's human to human. That connection between our employees, our caregivers, and the individuals that they serve is something that Amy and I both value.
The rest of the team has been wonderful. I've been asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of listening. They are more than willing to help me understand the nuances of our communities, why things have been done certain ways, and the history behind things. It's been a great collaborative experience.
HL: What has your experience transitioning into the COO role been like over the past three months? What is the strategy behind your first 90 days and what would you like to accomplish?
Moore: It's been a great experience. I am excited to come to work every day because I'm working with an incredible team and a great organization. I'm focused on learning as much as I can about the communities we serve; getting to know community leaders, our physician and medical staff leaders; and looking to understand and truly engaged within the communities we serve.
I'm also looking for opportunities for us to partner with our community service groups that are out there, with law enforcement, with first responders, the educational folks in our community—the glue that brings our communities together—for us to collectively work together and focus on improving the health status of the communities we serve.
Inspira has a new strategic plan that's focused on how to better engage and meet the needs of the community around primary care, bringing specialized care to everyone, and creating access to that care in the community.
You have to understand the social determinants of health, the situation in our community regarding things like food insecurity, education, employment, those indicators are 80% of someone's health status. What we do in healthcare is only 20%, and that's only if we're doing it really well. Our focus is to make sure that we maximize that 20% while also partnering with other organizations and institutions to make sure that we're collectively helping to address social determinants.
The big goal for me is to understand those opportunities and to map out our strategy for the next three years on how we deliver on that promise of our strategic plan to the communities we serve.
At the same time, I'm also starting to build relationships. I'm appreciative to everyone that I've met, from local mayors, to educators, to law enforcement, key physicians, you name it, everyone has been more than willing to spend the time with me to help me understand their perspective and the knowledge that they can bring to the table.
HL: What does the health system currently look like during this surge in Delta variant cases?
Moore: Certainly, we are seeing the uptick. During the first week in July, we were at a low point where we had combined in our three hospitals eight COVID positive patients. As of September 23, we're closer to 70. It is following the trend lines that the Department of Health puts out based on all the predictive models. The number in and of itself does not compare to the last two surges that we went through.
The big difference for us right now, though, is that the demand for our services is incredibly high for everything other than COVID. It's not only us, there are other colleagues in South Jersey who are seeing this phenomenon of need and demand from the community for care in our EDs. That ultimately ends up with many admissions as well. We're running at or near capacity almost on a daily basis in all of our ERs and our inpatient units as well, and so that combination is putting a lot of stress on the system.
HL: What strategies will you implement to help the hospital recover from the COVID-19 pandemic?
Moore: Our frontline workers are truly heroes, and I know that term gets used a lot, but this has been relentless on them ever since the original outbreak of COVID. A big focus for us is on the health and well-being of our staff, and how to help them build resiliency because there's no such thing as healthcare without the people that provide the care.
One of our big focuses that supports all of our work and helps us be much more focused and improves our ability to provide the safest care possible to all of our patients is our journey toward high reliability and to be in a highly reliable organization. Inspira has been on that journey for multiple years now. It is a huge focus of mine; I am a true believer in the concepts of high reliability. That's what allows us to bring our consistency to the way we provide care every day, and make sure that every single interaction becomes of the highest level of quality.
Another big focus is about access to care. It's a struggle everywhere right now, but we do need to continue to focus on meeting our communities where they are, leveraging technology, and telemedicine and virtual services are a huge part of that. It's also technology in using artificial intelligence to provide better and faster care, and better clinical decision making, and the ability for folks to monitor their health status at home without having to be in the hospital. Those are the strategies that will be focused on over the coming years.
And then, working collaboratively with folks across the country and grassroots efforts in our communities to begin to understand how we can truly make a difference when it comes to behavioral health, and needs for behavioral health intervention, and substance use disorders. They need to be part of our strategy. It's truly a crisis in our country right now and it is in our communities as well.
HL: What other initiatives are you excited to implement as COO?
Moore: I'm excited about working with the team here to understand how we can leverage all the expertise of all the folks that are employed by Inspira, our colleagues here, as well as all the folks that are a part of our voluntary medical staff. As an industry, we haven't done the best job in the past of listening to and understanding the folks that are at the sharp end of care, the people that are right there touching the patient and delivering care. I'm excited because I know Amy believes in that, and I know that our new colleagues that have come to join us in the last few weeks, Robin A. Walton and Anneliese McMenamin, SPHR, SHRM-SCP believe that.
I'm excited to be part of those strategies and understand how we can engage more effectively and more directly with all of our colleagues here at Inspira. That's a big key for us in the future to moving the dial and improving the health of our communities.