In light of International Women's Day, HealthLeaders showcases inspiring women serving in healthcare leadership.
March 8 is International Women's Day, a day of global celebration of the achievements of women. HealthLeaders is proud to recognize women leaders in the healthcare sector around the nation. Below are stories of women healthcare executives serving in clinical care, finance, innovation, nursing, revenue cycle, and strategic operations.
Also, HealthLeaders is excited to announce the upcoming launch of two Women in Healthcare Leadership Initiatives. Check out the announcement below!
CLINICAL CARE
Patricia Gabbe, MD, professor of pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology at The Ohio State University College of Medicine
This story details the primary elements of the Moms2B program, a community-based interdisciplinary intervention program that Gabbe founded at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
Nidia Williams, PhD, vice president of quality and safety at Lifespan in Providence, Rhode Island
Williams details how capitalizing on talent is a pivotal part of crisis command culture, and how "the secret sauce is having the right people with the right training."
Bulgarella details how the Birmingham, Alabama–based academic medical center sector has been affected by COVID-19 and what business opportunities will be available after the pandemic.
Angela Lalas, CPA, CFO at Loma Linda University Health
Lalas, who has been with the nonprofit health system since 2006 spoke with HealthLeaders after assuming her role as CFO for the nonprofit health system. Lalas has been recognized in recent years as a rising star within the healthcare finance community.
INNOVATION
Karen Murphy, PhD, RN, executive vice president and chief innovation officer for The Steele Institute for Health Innovation at Geisinger
Murphy shares how she uses her bedside experience to inspire innovation at a federal and state level, and how she's focused on transforming healthcare though Geisinger's Steele Institute for Health Innovation.
Michelle Conger, chief strategy officer for OSF HealthCare and chief executive officer for OSF Saint Gabriel Digital Health
Englebright shares how the hospital system has helped the health system's 98,000 nurses through the pandemic, most of whom are millennials and Gen Z.
Robyn Begley, DNP, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, CEO of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership, and chief nursing officer and senior vice president of workforce for the American Hospital Association
Begley shares her thoughts on how to reach President Biden's 100-day vaccination goal during a COVID-19 Vaccines: Preparing Your Organization for the Expanded Rollout webinar.
REVENUE CYCLE
Allyson Bonner Keller, FACHE, executive director of Piedmont Healthcare's patient connection center
Sevenikar shares how the health system has "gamified" its revenue cycle management workflow to turn employees' everyday tasks into opportunities to earn points, badges, and compete with each other.
STRATEGY
Jennifer Montgomery, BSN, MSA, FACHE, president and CEO of McLaren St. Luke's
Montgomery spoke with HealthLeaders when McLaren Health Care acquired St. Luke's Hospital, located in Maumee, Ohio, and shared insights about her healthcare background, her new role, and the strategy behind the acquisition.
Carladenise Edwards, PhD, senior vice president and chief strategy officer for Henry Ford Health System
After Dr. Edwards first joined Henry Ford Health System in July 2020, she shared how she hoped to implement strategies for equitable, accessible care for the health system's diverse communities.
NEW!
Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast
HealthLeaders is excited to announce the upcoming launch of our Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast, debuting April 7. It will be available on Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher the first Wednesday of every month. Check out the podcast trailer here.
NEW!
Women in Healthcare Leadership Profiles Quarterly Report
HealthLeaders is also excited to announce the launch of Women in Healthcare Leadership Profiles, debuting on March 29. This report, releasing the last Monday of each quarter, will showcase interviews with inspiring women who serve in healthcare leadership.
Ascension's Chief Community Impact Officer Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee, MD, MPH, MBA shares how her curiosity, questions, and servant leadership style has influenced her executive experience.
Tamarah Duperval-Brownlee, MD, MPH, MBA, says her interest in healthcare began early on.
"I was a single-digit [in age,] for sure," she notes.
Now, Duperval-Brownlee has more than two decades of experience in healthcare and currently serves as senior vice president and chief community impact officer for Ascension, a nonprofit Catholic healthcare system headquartered in St. Louis.
Duperval-Brownlee says her mother, an immigrant from Haiti, also held a long interest in both health and medicine and served as one of her earliest mentors.
"Her work ethic, raising two girls as a single mom, paved the way. The cost of your being at the table is to be able to work hard and give, and that she did," Duperval-Brownlee tells HealthLeaders. "She laid a great foundation for me."
After her mother came to the U.S. and married, she entered the healthcare sector. "[My mother became] a nurse, got her associate degree after having a brief career in teaching, and then discovered that nursing was not for her," Duperval-Brownlee says. "She ended up going into laboratory science."
While visiting her mother in the lab, Duperval-Brownlee says her curiosity piqued. "I dug the whole thing: test tubes, and microscopes, and seeing doctors in the hallway," she says.
The servitude of healthcare leadership also called to her. "[There was] always this innate need to be able to help people and serve them in some way, shape, or form, with whatever I had. It seemed like a natural fit," she says.
Questions and curiosity lead the way
As her mother's career path took a turn, so did Duperval-Brownlee's.
"In medicine, [my career path has] been nothing like I thought it would be. I aimed to be the ultimate family doctor, which is what my primary discipline is,” she says. “But curiosity and challenges kept pushing me to explore different things. I probably should have been prepared for that since medicine is my second career."
Although she says she always had an interest in healthcare, Duperval-Brownlee originally went to school for chemical engineering and received a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University.
She later received a Master of Public Health degree from the Harvard University School of Public Health where she specialized in healthcare policy and maternal child health, as well as a Physician Executive Master of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
"In medicine, I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to get in and know people's families," she says. "But I kept being bothered by some key questions: why some people had needs and why some people didn't."
A self-described extroverted-introvert, Duperval-Brownlee says she became a “reluctant leader” during her career but added that it was necessary to her development.
Duperval-Brownlee says she stepped up to lead for the populations to ensure that they had “healthcare access, and quality, and service.”
"Almost all my healthcare leadership roles, with the exception of my time at Ascension, came out of times of crisis where previous leadership had failed, there was a gap, and they needed somebody to step in and answer the call,” she says.
Duperval-Brownlee grew up receiving care from public sector healthcare systems and hadseen firsthand the impacts of disparities in healthcare outcomes. She adds that her career path was driven by the questions that she had, as well as "divinely orchestrated opportunities."
"For example, after I trained, I thought I [was] going to start practicing then. But being able to do a fellowship in health policy that affected minority populations at Harvard changed my life," she says. "It gave me a direction to be at the table to influence those systems that enable everybody to live healthily and well, but particularly those who have been made marginalized."
Duperval-Brownlee worked in underserved medicine for 14 years, where she says she began asking questions about "where our decisions [are] being made and where are the resources."
In March 2019, she joined Ascension as the organization’s first senior vice president and chief community impact officer.
"Being able to be a part of a system like Ascension gave a different lens about how you can use your seat at the table, and your platform, to affect that many more people,” she says. “It's the curiosity and the questions that needed to be answered that drove it all along. I'm really grateful for all the experiences … they've made me who I am today."
Finding a voice
In addition to her mother, Duperval-Brownlee says mentors and sponsors have come in "interesting forms" throughout her life.
"My own pediatrician when I was growing up ended up being a professor of mine when I was in medical school. That was really rewarding," she says. "I had never seen a female doctor, let alone a black female doctor, prior to meeting her. To be able to benefit from her knowledge was awesome and she encouraged me."
Other mentors included people who inspired Duperval-Brownlee along the way, such as her program director in residency, "a white gentleman who had a passion for caring for people who were vulnerable and underserved." She adds that she was inspired by his work ethic, which drove her to figure out what to do with her questions, passion, and skills.
She also credits a sponsor, who's a member of Ascension, for making sure opportunities were created for her while also challenging her to rise above barriers.
"I'll never forget, we had a conversation once when I was about to start another program opportunity and [they said], 'Tam, you are one of the most risk-averse people I've ever met, so I'm challenging you to explore this while you're about to start something new; come with your fullest self, and [don't] be afraid.' It was just the swift kick in the pants I needed to go to another level," she says.
Duperval-Brownlee attributes her greatest challenge to finding and using her voice.
"It's a challenge, sometimes, in executive leadership spaces to ensure that the voice you have is heard … and letting people in the room know that it's worth being heard," she says. "I certainly had a number of various experiences [where] my voice was minimized. I initially took it as hurt. But then I turned it around, and I enlisted the help of others to say, 'What is it, if it's not me? How do you transform that?'"
Duperval-Brownlee says she has grown as a leader and found her voice at Ascension, where she's excited about the organization's commitment to be "intentional in being anti-racist, as well as realizing an identity of being inclusive in all aspects of what we do."
"I love this because it's not an initiative, it is our framework. It's challenging our organizations to reckon with some things that are sometimes scary," she says. "Everyone, from the person who is at the most frontline entry levels to our CEO, has a critical role in understanding, critical examining, listening, learning, and then acting."
Advice for future leaders
Duperval-Brownlee suggests that those who want to join the C-suite should "think about it very carefully before doing it."
She explained that not everyone necessarily wants to join the C-suite. "It has to critically resonate with your purpose," she says. Those who are interested should ask themselves:
What is my purpose?
What is my passion?
What skills of mine are aligned to succeed?
The C-suite should also be diverse and reflective of the organization, she notes, urging a call for diverse voices as leaders, including women, people of color, people of diverse backgrounds, and people who've had experiences in different careers.
"The C-suite is a humble place to be able to affect things in an organization, and particularly in healthcare," she says. "It's a critical time that we bring diverse voices and perspectives to the table."
Duperval-Brownlee also says that to keep advancing, leaders should remind themselves that they are necessary.
"Your voice, your skills, your positions, your background; all of it is necessary to not only be successful for you, but for others that you're intending to reach," she says. "Keep learning, and not to be comfortable with being comfortable. Continue to challenge yourself with the opportunities of stretching and being uncomfortable with situations that help you grow."
Three health system CEOs presented how their healthcare systems made steps to transform leadership and care at their organizations.
HealthLeaders recently hosted a CEO Ideas Exchange, where three health system CEOs shared how they worked to transform leadership and care at their organizations.
The event featured presentations from three HealthLeaders Exchange member CEOs, including Tori Bayless, CEO of Luminis Health; Dr. Imran Andrabi, president and CEO of ThedaCare; and Flo Spyrow, president and CEO of Northern Arizona Healthcare.
Below are highlights from their presentations and advice for executives on how to model these changes at their respective provider organizations.
Creating diverse leadership
Luminis Health, headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, is a health system that came together through the merger of Anne Arundel Medical Center and Doctors Community Health in 2019. Following a comprehensive strategy, the organization has aimed to unify the system while also ensuring diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) remain part of its core values.
During her Ideas Exchange presentation, Luminis CEO Tori Bayless shared how the organization "transformed the governance and leadership of Luminis Health to be more diverse and representative of the communities" that it serves.
Bayless attributes the American Hospital Association 2015 equity pledge as the catalyst for Luminis’ initiative, mentioning that it “helped structure the work of the organization” in four parts: REAL (race, ethnicity, and language) data collection and analytics, leadership and governance, diversity, cultural competency training, and community partnerships.
Luminis also took three deliberate steps in creating a more diverse and equitable leadership and governance board to help drive the initiatives:
Created a Board Health Equity and Anti-Racism Task Force (HEART Force), made up of trustees, executive staff, medical staff, and external community partners to guide the health organization's efforts.
Started measuring and tracking diversity and made it one of the organization's "true north metrics.” DEI measurements have increased across the board between 2018 and 2021.
Implemented the "Rooney rule," ensuring at least one person in the final slate of being considered for a position is a racial ethnic minority.
The health system also uses "Race forward," a racial equity impact assessment from the Center for Racial Justice Innovation as a lens, and was the first health system to start a "Coming to the Table" chapter to focus on monthly meetings to create "candid and safe dialogue" around racism.
Bayless also shared Luminis Health's "Vision 2030," a 10-year strategic plan to guide the organization into the future, which encompasses the DEI initiatives.
Bayless said, "through this framework, we'll ensure that diversity, equity, anti-racism, inclusion, and justice are paramount in our vision 2030,” adding that Luminis will become “a national model."
She also added, “By putting forward and implementing the recommendations of the Health Equity and Anti-Racism Task Force (HEART), it’s prominent in our Vision 2030, [and we want to] make sure that we are learning as much as we can, sharing ideas as much as we can, and prioritizing this work for our own organization, and in partnership with the community."
Growing adaptive leadership
ThedaCare, a community health system headquartered in Appleton, Wisconsin, has found ways to rethink leadership in the organization and streamline problem solving.
During his presentation, Dr. Imran Andrabi, president and CEO of the organization, shared how the health system's core strategy of adaptive leadership was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"We've been on this journey over the last few years to become an adaptive organization, realizing that in healthcare, so much is changing so frequently, that we will not be able to predict all the different things that are going to happen in the future," Andrabi said. "The pandemic is a great example of what it put all of us through, in terms of being nimble and being able to pivot and be adaptive."
ThedaCare’s definition of an adaptive leader is "one who is able to continually create value … under varying conditions … while building a simple and elegant, high performance, high fulfillment organization," Andrabi said.
ThedaCare's adaptive leadership framework is made up numerous steps:
Define what an adaptive leader is
Looking into the idea of the domain of knowledge, and deconstructing how much a leader knows versus what they don't know
Depth of thought and action: finding the root causes (the important) of problems instead of focusing on the symptoms (the urgent) to create streamlined problem solving
Shifting leadership mindset from fixed to growth; changing thoughts from "I cannot fail…" to "I can only learn and grow…"
Reframing problems and how to approach the work needed to solve them
The organization also created an adaptive leadership cohort, in which they "did a lot of didactic education from a mindset perspective in terms of how to think as an adaptive leader, and how to take some of these principles and make them [their] own," Andrabi said.
According to Andrabi, the organization then broke up the cohorts into smaller groups and had the leaders come together to pick the top four issues that they wanted to simplify and figure out ways to get to the root cause, thus creating a "significant impact across the entire organization with principles learnt during adaptive leadership."
Transforming care
Northern Arizona Healthcare (NAH) is a two-hospital health system headquartered in Flagstaff Arizona, which also serves over 700,000 people across the region through numerous specialty clinics, outpatient centers, cancer centers, and air medical transport.
During their presentation, president and CEO, Flo Spyrow, along with vice president of care transformation, Jacob Lansburg, shared how the organization transformed the way the health system delivers care.
The first step the health system took to become a fully-integrated organization was to eliminate the two hospital boards and create a system-wide board in its place.
The organization created a new framework for the organization to achieve "excellence in everything," and transform the healthcare environment. By creating a blended framework out of the "Balridge framework" and "Lean-Six Sigma methodology" to develop their "own unique approach to the pursuit of high reliability, differentiation, and amazing healthcare," Spyrow said.
The organization is focused on committing to obtain national ranking in the next few years and are focusing on leadership across the organization.
"It's all about leadership at NAH," Spyrow said. This includes creating specialized strategies for each leadership level for:
The board of directors
The health system's senior leadership
The health system's physician leadership
Lansburg shared how NAH has created a multi-year strategy between 2020 and 2023 to create improvements for the health system around:
Structure
Overview and insight
Stability
Capability
Robustness
By building a culture of continuous improvement in the organization, Lansburg said NAH is continuing to focus on continuous education and improvement to help leadership teams get to the root cause of problems and meet goals. The organization also created a "Care Transformation Team" to accelerate operation and improvement competency through the leadership teams.
Spyrow concluded the presentation explaining that the organization owes its staff and patients to make strides to offer high quality care, and to continue to grow and learn.
"We have to live in this world of possibilities and what we should be, versus what we are today," Spyrow said.
The HealthLeaders Exchange is an executive community for sharing ideas, solutions, and insights. Please join the community at our LinkedIn page.
Stephanie Fendrick will now serve as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, and Rhonda Jordan will now serve as executive vice president and chief human resources officer.
New Jersey-based Virtua Health announced Wednesday the promotion of its chief strategy officer and chief human resources officer to also serve in executive vice president roles.
Stephanie Fendrick will now serve as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, and Rhonda Jordan will serve as executive vice president and chief human resources officer.
"It has been my honor to work with both Rhonda and Stephanie over the past several years," Dennis W. Pullin, FACHE, president and CEO of Virtua, said in the press release. "I have witnessed time and again their natural ability to strategically advance our organization to the forefront of our industry while fearlessly advocating for the best interests of our colleagues and the members of our community."
Fendrick has more than 25 years' experience in the healthcare industry and has served as chief strategy officer for Virtua since January 2018. Fendrick has been attributed as the "key in the successful integration" of the merger between Virtua and Lourdes Health System in 2019.
"Maintaining a competitive edge in a region known for health care excellence requires curiosity and a questioning attitude," Fendrick said in the press release. "At Virtua, we encourage creativity and innovation to better serve our communities, and I look forward to helping drive our ongoing transformation."
Jordan has over 30 years' experience in human resources and has spent 24 years working at Virtua. She joined in 1997 as the director of human resources and continued to climb up the leadership ladder, beginning her time as chief human resources officer in August 2013.
Jordan is also credited for leading the "introduction of an exciting and renewed culture – the Culture of We – and the launch of a more in-depth comprehensive inclusion, diversity, and equity initative" during the Virtua and Lourdes merger.
"Virtua is regularly listed as a ‘best place to work,’ which is a testament to our people and our culture," Jordan said in the press release. "I am delighted to continue my professional journey in this new role and to further ensure Virtua’s workforce lives and leads by its values."
The Catholic healthcare organization, which currently leases space in Irving, Texas, will build a new corporate office in the Las Colinas neighborhood.
CHRISTUS Health, an international Catholic health system headquartered in Irving, Texas, announced in February that it will be building a new location for its corporate headquarters in the Las Colinas neighborhood.
The health system, which currently leases space for its headquarters, plans to finish construction of the new 400,000 square foot building and 10-story parking garage by 2023.
Ernie Sadau, CEO of CHRISTUS, recently spoke with HealthLeaders about the decision to build a new corporate headquarters in the Lone Star State as well as how it will seek to enhance the organization's mission, culture, and values.
The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What was the strategy behind choosing Irving as the headquarters' permanent home?
Ernie Sadau: We knew our lease was coming to an end in a few years [time] and we continued to do some research on the Dallas-Fort Worth area. We did not explore other cities in Texas because we did that almost nine years ago when we made the decision to consolidate our corporate offices to the Las Colinas area in Irving.
We were comfortable with where our headquarters were, but a lot of things have changed in nine years. We did some research, but we believed [staying] in the Las Colinas area was the right decision for all the reasons that we did it before: being close to the airport and near the center of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the quality of life, great roads systems, lower cost of living, and skilled employees that we have access to.
We felt after exploring everything, and the great relationship we have with Las Colinas, that this was the right decision and will be our home.
HL: What are the positives of going from a leased space to one that the organization will own?
Sadau: Being able to design it from the ground up to ensure that it fits our culture, that it portrays our mission and the values that we want to continue to build upon in our organization; owning your own building gives you that benefit.
It also gives you a lot more flexibility because there's nobody that you have to worry about other than yourself. If you want to do some things differently, you can; if you want to redesign one day, maybe monetize it later for cash, you can do that. You have significantly more flexibility and control.
HL:What new features will this new headquarters have?
Sadau: It's going to be around 400,000 square feet and about 13 to 15 floors. It will have a smaller floor plan, so that's why it'll be significantly higher.
It's perfect timing right now because of what we've gone through with this pandemic. We're refocusing and putting a lot of emphasis on ensuring that we have a safe workplace. We'll have the highest possible filtering systems for air flow as well as safe distancing. We'll be able to have a significant amount of outdoor workspace, collaboration space, reflection space, as well as [space for] exercise and walking.
We're putting a major emphasis on ensuring that it is a safe environment, a healthy environment, and an environment that continues to enhance our culture for our associates. Because [our associates] are our biggest asset; they are our number one asset within the CHRISTUS Health ministry.
HL: CHRISTUS signed the ‘Confronting Racism by Achieving Health Equity’ pledge last month. Do you have any thoughts you'd like to share about that?
Sadau: From a CHRISTUS Health perspective, diversity, inclusion, and health equity have always been a major focus for our ministry.
Over nine years ago, when I became CEO, we put those [goals] among our top three strategies, and they continue to be one of the major priorities for us as a ministry.
[The pledge] isn’t anything new for us, it was just affirming our statement as a member of Catholic healthcare to the entire nation about how important this is for the lives of everybody we serve in our communities. We will continue to enhance that because we can always do better. I'm excited as we look to the future being aligned with all the systems within Catholic healthcare and hopefully energizing other health systems to move forward and take some big steps forward in this area.
Erik Wexler shares insights into his new role, how he plans on leading Providence South through the pandemic, and what steps the health system needs to take to recover from the pandemic.
Providence St. Joseph Healthannounced in late January that Erik Wexler, the chief executive of Providence Southern California, will serve as president of operations and strategy of Providence South. In his new role, Wexler will be responsible for hospital operations in California, Texas, and New Mexico.
Wexler will continue to serve in both roles until Kevin Manemann, who currently serves as regional chief executive of physician enterprise, takes over as the new chief executive of Providence Southern California on March 1.
Since the promotion, Wexler released a statement about the ongoing lawsuit between Providence St. Joseph and Hoag Memorial Hospital, and the demurrer ruling issued on February 2, where he shared that the health system will "continue to vigorously defend against the lawsuit."
HealthLeaders recently caught up with Wexler about the hearing as well as his promotion, the details on his new role, how he plans to lead Providence South, and what steps the health system needs to take to recover from the pandemic.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HL:How will your new role as president of operations and strategy for Providence South differ from your previous role as CEO of Providence Southern California?
Erik Wexler: The way that [Providence CEO] Dr. [Rod] Hochman has organized the updated structure for our health system splits the organization in half. Lisa Vance is the president of operations and strategy for the north and I [lead] the south. This allows Lisa and I to spend more time with our colleague leaders in enhancing the delivery of care for those that we serve.
The biggest difference [in this new role] is I will be less focused on the detail of operations and on the design of strategy, and more focused on the bigger picture and how that relates to our health system. So [my role is] how we take our initiatives across the health system and cascade them in a fluid and collegial subsidiarity manner to each of our regions.
HL:What does the pandemic currently look like in California?
Wexler: We saw a surge in cases that was fairly catastrophic and came close to impacting the healthcare system in a way that would have forced rationalization of care. We did not get there, but we came close in California.
In southern California and northern California, [Providence has] focused on looking 10 exits down the highway, spending a considerable amount of time in being proactive before the most difficult issues present to us. This prepared us well for the surge.
As an example, we began to realize that as we saw more highly acute cases being admitted to our intensive care units, and our ICU was getting to over 100 percent capacity, that oxygen utilization would begin to be in the highest demand that perhaps the health system has ever experienced.
If O2 systems are not stabilized and replenished properly, you could get into a situation where you must cut back on O2 use or a system like that could fail. We took a proactive approach and brought in bulk oxygen and placed that strategically in southern California, so if one of our hospitals somehow lost or began to lose capacity, we could move that bulk O2 immediately to stabilize the system.
Another example is, as we began to see the surge, we knew we would have more people at the front door of our emergency departments. We had an early effort to put together a regional incident command center personnel pool. It had about 1,000 people that were in support services, regional jobs, and back-office functions that could be deployed to our various hospitals if there was a plethora of cases, for which they needed more staff. And that happened. We wound up using over 600 of those caregivers to help with admittance and environmental services.
I was deployed several times a week, at my own strong request and desire, where I served as an environmental service aide removing trash and dirty linen. This is the kind of augmented staff that made a big difference to be able to function efficiently through this crisis.
HL:What is your strategy to lead the southern region through the pandemic?
Wexler: When the crisis began a year ago, we, as a country, were learning how to treat these patients and how to increase our PPE to protect our patients as well as our caregivers. At that time, when we had 250 [COVID] patients across 13 hospitals, it was one of the most difficult times that we experienced in the past 12 months.
We went from 250 cases up to 1,800 cases only a couple months ago in our 13 hospitals in southern California. While it was extraordinarily difficult and we had to put a lot of those proactive measures in place that I spoke about, we were able to manage that crisis in a more experienced manner.
The most important thing for us right now is how we're going to recover from the pandemic because we know how to treat and manage COVID-19. Our caregivers are tired; they are emotionally drained and extremely stressed. Their families have suffered demonstrably through the commitment that these amazing caregivers, nurses, doctors, environmental service aides, pharmacists, medical record associates, security officers, and executives [have given].
What we need to do is begin to concentrate on what recovery looks like, even though it may be six months to a year down the road. There are three important aspects.
1. Mental well-being, which includes counseling services, access to mental wellness services.
2. Dedicated time away from work [as well as] disconnected and invested time with one's own loved ones.
3. How we reward and recognize our healthcare heroes as they come through this crisis so that their contributions are not forgotten.
Those are the next most important objectives for us as leaders.
HL: Beyond getting through the pandemic, what are some of your goals for the first year in this role?
Wexler: The most important goal for me is to get out to Texas, New Mexico, and northern California, and begin to understand the beautiful cultures that exist within those regions, get to know the leadership much better than I already do, and understand how I can ease their way as they work to advance the delivery of healthcare.
A couple weeks ago, I went to Texas and visited our ministries, hospitals, and leadership team there. It was an inspirational experience and allowed for me and my colleagues that are within that geography to begin to connect with one another and forge a relationship for the future.
The other thing that's going to be important is how I, Vance in the north, and our other most senior leaders within the system work to lock arms and execute on not only the innovation that we are committed to across Providence but to deliver on our promise of health for a better world. I can't think of a better, more experienced, and committed group of senior leaders in our health system to collaborate and deliver on the most important thing that we have done in our lives: keeping people well, healthy, and serving them at a scary time in their lives when they may not be well and they need us for survival.
HealthLeaders: Can you share your reaction to the recent demurrer hearing around Providence St. Joseph and Hoag Memorial Hospital's ongoing lawsuit?
Wexler: The demurrer is a process meant for a judge to decide whether a plaintiff should have their day in court. In this case, I don't think either party is surprised that the opportunity for Hoag to bring its case to a full judicial review is logical moving forward. It's important to note that the judge that reviewed this demurrer suggested that our own attorneys file an immediate appeal to his opinion and have a three-judge administrative panel do a double-check on his own opinion.
This is a rare occurrence and caught our attention because there may be something there that the judge agrees with from our perspective that negates the need for disaffiliation. In either case, we're prepared to vigorously defend the reasons why the affiliation is good for the residents of Orange County.
An eHealth analysis found a 16% increase of Medicare customers choosing Medicare Advantage plans during the 2021 annual enrollment period compared to last year.
Medicare Advantage plan selections increased 16% in the 2021 annual enrollment period (AEP) compared to last year, according to an eHealth report released Tuesday.
The analysis found that during the 2021 AEP, 77% of eHealth's Medicare customers chose Medicare Advantage plans, a 16% increase from the 61% of eHealth Medicare customers who selected such plans in the 2020 AEP.
According to eHealth CEO Scott Flanders, the increasing popularity of Medicare Advantage is “one of the best illustrations of successful private/public cooperation in the health care sector today."
"Over the years, competition and innovation among private insurers offering Medicare Advantage plans has brought down average premiums while increasing benefits, and enthusiastic beneficiaries are responding by enrolling in ever greater numbers, as our Medicare Index Report shows,” he stated in a press release.
While popularity has increased in Medicare Advantage plans, the average premiums have decreased 71% since 2018, according to eHealth.
The average monthly cost for 2021 Medicare Advantage plans was $5, due to an "increased enrollment in $0 premium plans."
The report also found 86% of eHealth customers chose Medicare Advantage plans with a $0 monthly premium, a 23% increase from 2018. This marked a continued increase in consumers choosing plans with $0 monthly premiums.
In 2019, 73% of customers chose plans with a $0 monthly premium; in 2018, 63% of customers chose plans with a $0 monthly premium.
Related: eHealth Snapshot: Average Monthly ACA Premiums Increased 6%
P. Sue Perrotty will serve as interim CEO, replacing Clint Matthews who is retiring after leading the organization for a decade.
Tower Health named P. Sue Perrotty as interim president and CEO Monday afternoon, following the announced retirement of CEO Clint Matthews.
Perrotty, who has served on Tower’s board of directors since 2019, will lead on an interim basis. The press release does not mention a search for a permanent replacement.
"Sue has built an incredible reputation as a dynamic leader with compassion and integrity," Tom Work, chair of Tower’s board of directors, said in the press release. "Having served on our Board since 2019, she uniquely understands our organization and path forward."
Matthews has led the Pennsylvania-based health system, which operates seven hospitals, for the past 10 years.
The CEO appointment marks the latest C-suite turnover at Tower after CFO Gary Conner stepped down earlier this year following heavy financial losses.
In January, the integrated health system announced Conner's resignation as well as plans to hire a restructuring advisor to sell its Philadelphia-based hospitals to offset financial losses over the past few years.
"During Clint's tenure, Tower Health has become a healthcare leader focused on improving the health of communities throughout the Reading and greater Philadelphia region," Work said in the press release. "The Board thanks him for his service."
Prior to her appointment at Tower, Perrotty served as a leader in the banking and finance industries, where she oversaw “multi-billion-dollar corporate integrations, managed several mergers and advised businesses of all sizes in the Reading community, Philadelphia and beyond," according to the press release.
She also previously served as executive vice president and head of global operations for First Union Corp. After her retirement, she served as chief of staff to former Pennsylvania First Lady Judge Marjorie Rendell.
"I am honored to have been given this responsibility as we collectively chart a smart future for Tower Health," Perrotty said in a statement. "As we move forward, I want to focus on listening to members of the clinical, support and administrative teams – the people that make Tower Health such a special place. In the weeks and months ahead, we'll be guided by our commitment to our mission of providing high-quality and affordable care to the communities we all call home."
CEO Rick Pollack released a statement on behalf of the AHA, stating that RAND "ignores the unique role of hospitals and health systems."
Rick Pollack, CEO of the American Hospital Association (AHA), released a statement Thursday afternoon pushing back on RAND Corporation's recent hospital pricing report.
Pollack took issue with the RAND study, published Thursday morning, which found that regulating hospital prices would save more money than improving price transparency or increasing competition.
In a statement, Pollack said hospitals are “doing their part to contain costs” and added that RAND dismissed rising costs and market concentration among commercial health payers.
"RAND continues to regurgitate older and flawed ‘studies,’ which may be why they land on a poorly-reasoned proposal to have the government regulate prices,” Pollack stated. “Despite claims otherwise, it is widely acknowledged that Medicare and Medicaid – the two largest public programs – pay below the cost of delivering care."
According to RAND estimations, setting prices for all commercial healthcare payers could reduce hospital spending between $61.9 billion and $236.6 billion annually if the rates were set from 100% to 150% of the federal Medicare program.
That change would cut overall national health spending by 1.7% to 6.5%, according to the analysis.
"As policymakers consider options for reducing hospital prices paid by private health plans, they will need to weigh the potential impact of different policies on hospital revenues and the quality of care, and they will also need to take into account the political and administrative feasibility of each option," Christopher Whaley, a study co-author and RAND policy researcher, said in a statement.
In response to the study’s policy recommendations, Pollack stated that price-setting would “only enrich commercial health insurers at the expense of innovations in care that truly benefit patients."
The RAND researchers estimate that improving health care price transparency could reduce U.S. spending by $8.7 billion to $26.6 billion per year.
They estimate that increasing competition by decreasing hospital market concentration could reduce hospital spending by $6.2 billion to $68.9 billion annually, depending on the size of the change and market price sensitivity.
"Improving markets through increased price transparency and competition could help reduce prices but would not reduce hospital spending to the extent that aggressively regulating prices could," Jodi Liu, the study's lead author and a policy researcher at RAND, said in a statement. "Direct price regulation could have the largest impact on hospital spending, but this approach faces the biggest political challenges."
Related: Employers and Private Insurers Paid Hospitals 247% of What Medicare Would Have
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify the RAND study’s findings.
CEO David Dill shares how being a national health system, having a strong organizational culture, and maintaining ongoing partnerships successfully guided LifePoint through the past year.
When the pandemic hit last year, LifePoint Health, a national health system with 89 hospitals across 29 states, was well-equipped to persevere through the worst of the pandemic.
By implementing system-wide communication measures, as well as instituting the strategic sharing of data, supplies, and staff, LifePoint was able to move resources to where they were needed most.
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, the Brentwood, Tennessee-based health system has also continued to operate with its mission in the forefront: Making Communities Healthier.
"We like to think of ourselves as the leader in the delivery of community-based healthcare," David Dill, CEO of LifePoint Health, said during a recent interview with HealthLeaders. "Community hospitals are such an important part of the backbone of the delivery system and it's never been more obvious than what we have lived through over the course of the last year."
Dill shares how being a national health system, having a strong organizational culture, and maintaining ongoing partnerships successfully guided LifePoint through the past year.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: What are some of the noteworthy lessons you learned from the pandemic?
David Dill: [The first lesson highlights] the benefits of being a system. We're relying on each other. That is something that is unique about our company and proved to be valuable.
The importance of partnerships is [lesson] number two. I cannot overemphasize how important partnerships are to our company. As evidence and research were changing, we were in constant contact with our partners to help take the most relevant and useful information, distill it in a [useful] manner and disseminate it out to our hospitals. That reliance on and importance of partnerships was emphasized throughout the pandemic.
[The final lesson] was the importance of culture. Our company's shared mission, vision, values, and guiding principles became a unifier during the pandemic. We focused on protecting our patients, protecting our people, and being the leaders in our communities.
Our mission statement is "making communities healthier." The mission statement and the culture of an organization will either get you through tough times, or it will be exposed in tough times. Our culture not only got us to this place but will be what leads us out of this pandemic.
HL: How has the pandemic affected quality initiatives across LifePoint Health facilities, and will these initiatives look different moving forward?
Dill: I am extremely proud that we were able to not only maintain our quality agenda, and the quality improvements that we had seen coming into the pandemic, but we were able to advance those.
[The pandemic] was a big pivot for us and took a significant amount of our time, but there's still quality to be delivered. Providing quality care at the bedside is our top priority and we have a strong foundation in a culture of quality and patient safety.
Our quality program [has] a strong foundation that we can build on. [Through] that continued focus on quality using the lens of our National Quality Program, we were able to advance that agenda even in the face of the pandemic. Our ability to maintain the improvement has reinforced the importance of standardization and evidence-based care. I wish we could move quicker in some of these areas, but we have made a lot of progress and will continue to make more progress. It's vitally important that we create more standardization and evidence-based care as we move forward.
Our National Quality Program is the framework that we use that ensures consistent, high standards of quality and care across the organization. That's important — it's not just a hospital in a certain geographic area, but at [a nationwide] scale. While [our] tactics may evolve as new evidence and leading practices emerge, we can use that framework to spread out that knowledge at scale and implement it.
[Moving forward,] I don't think it will look dramatically different, other than technology will change, evidence will change, research will change. We have strong clinical partnerships with academic medical centers around the country. In fact, we'll be celebrating the 10th anniversary of our Duke/LifePoint partnership. That partnership was founded on developing a quality program that we could spread out across the organization. Since we launched that with Duke, we have other academic medical center partners with Emory University, the University of Washington, Billings Clinic, and other nonprofit partners.
HL: What did the coordination of supplies, including PPE, ventilators, and staff look like between LifePoint's hospitals during the pandemic?
Dill: One of the benefits of our company, and one of the strengths that we add to the communities that we serve, is we're a system. We have insights and we have scale across [29] states.
We had some hospitals early on that were seeing few patients, and then we had a couple of early hotspots where we had to make sure that they had ample supply chain. That involved moving some equipment between different states and different facilities. Having an operational function that's centralized is vital and proved critical to our response.
Through our supply chain efforts early on in this pandemic, we created a new warehouse in Tennessee so that while product was being shipped to our hospitals, we were able to go out into the market and secure additional product and warehouse that. We still have some of those supplies in a warehouse that we'll continue to store up.
In April, we were also invited to participate in a meeting at the White House with [President Trump,] where we, alongside other leading health systems, developed a dynamic ventilator program and a virtual inventory of ventilators. The thought process was that [our country] probably has enough ventilators, they're just in the wrong place. So, if we have unused ventilators, we can loan those to the federal government, which can move those to strategic locations with the promise on the backend that [the ventilators] would move back to our hospitals when we needed them.
We were also able to move staff around. It's hard to take care of patients if you don't have nurses and skilled technicians in the right place at the right time. We had caregivers in certain parts of our country that raised their hand to say, "We have capacity here. We're not filling up with patients yet. I know there are other hospitals in need, I'm willing to get on a plane, leave my family, and go help."
HL:What initiatives will be implemented in 2021 to fulfill LifePoint's mission?
Dill: We are focused on continuing to further build our platform for the delivery of community-based care.
We'll continue to extend the mission and the footprint of the company through partnerships, joint ventures, and additional hospitals being added to the system. One area that I think you'll see us pivot to in a big way is around digital health. It has been on our roadmap for several years and COVID significantly accelerated that roadmap.
Some of the capabilities that we are bringing to the table for patients and for our communities across the country is integrated online scheduling tools for both in-person and telehealth visits. We're deploying this technology in our hospitals with on-demand telehealth services, virtual check-in, virtual waiting room options for on-site care to enhance safety, and a patient portal that provides 24-hour access to all their information.
Between growing in every one of our markets through digital health, connecting with patients a different way, and growing the footprint of hospitals, we're going to come out of this pandemic.
Our history shows that we know how to be good partners in these communities and will stay committed to our mission of making communities healthier.