Celebrate Women Healthcare Leaders During International Women's Day 2023.
March 8 is International Women's Day (IWD), a day to celebrate women's achievements, raise awareness on gender discrimination, and drive gender parity initiatives. This year's theme is embracing equity, an important topic in healthcare when it comes to patient and community care, and when it comes to leadership in healthcare.
HealthLeaders is proud to recognize women leaders in the healthcare sector around the nation who have achieved so much for themselves and their organizations, lifting up others in the process, and making healthcare a better industry.
In celebration of IWD, we've highlighted recent interviews with women executives who are making a difference in their organizations and the healthcare sector.
The coronavirus pandemic and related issues are still a leading concern for healthcare providers, the chief clinical officer of Banner Health says.
Marjorie Bessel, MD, has been with Banner Health for more than a decade. She has held many physician leadership roles at the health system, including serving as chief medical officer for several hospitals and working as chief medical officer of Banner Health's Arizona Division. Before taking on the chief clinical officer role, she served as vice president and chief medical officer of community delivery.
What began as an innovative way to monitor and care for COVID-19 patients at the height of the pandemic is evolving into a growing virtual nursing program at Atrium Health.
The North Carolina-based health system, now part of Advocate Health, launched its virtual nursing program in March 2021 when, like other health systems, nurses struggled to meet staffing demands.
Nurses loved it, patients loved it, and the health system noticed positive outcomes: decreased medication errors, decreased falls, increased patient satisfaction, and more, says Patricia Mook, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, CAHIMS, FAONL, vice president of nursing operations, professional development and practice.
At the end of December 2022, Advocate Aurora Health and Atrium Health completed their merger to create Advocate Health, a nonprofit health system serving patients across Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. The combined system, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, has 67 hospitals and more than a thousand sites of care and is the fifth largest nonprofit health system in the country.
Carol Lovin, MHSA, MN, executive vice president, chief of staff, and chief integration officer for Advocate Health, recently connected with HealthLeaders to talk about the integration that will be done in 2023 to bring the health system together, while the legacy providers continue to deliver care under their consumer-facing brands.
Airica Steed, EdD, MBA, RN, is breaking the glass ceiling in her new role as CEO of Cleveland, Ohio-based MetroHealth. She is the first woman, Black person, and nurse to lead the four-hospital nonprofit health system.
She previously served as COO of the Sinai Chicago Health System and president of Mount Sinai and Sinai Children's Hospital. She began her role on December 5, 2022, during a turbulent time for the organization, after the previous President and CEO, Akram Boutros, MD, was fired by the board of directors for allegedly authorizing himself bonuses without disclosing them to the board.
Earlier this year St. Jude Children's Research Hospital appointed Catherine Corbin the health system's first chief business innovation officer.
An expert in human-centered design, Corbin is charged with working with CEO James Downing, MD, and other senior leaders to guide the health system's $12.9 billion, six-year strategic plan, the largest and most ambitious investment in St Jude's 60-year history. This includes roughly $3 billion in planned construction projects.
Prior to joining St. Jude, she spent four years at the San Francisco-based global design and innovation firm IDEO, where she helped St. Jude develop programs like Family Commons and the St. Jude Global Alliance. She was also a principal at the architectural and engineering firm CannonDesign and was administrative director of orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery at a Chicago health system.
To Michelle Stansbury, innovation is a necessity at Houston Methodist. It certainly involves thinking outside the box, and now it also means thinking outside of the hospital.
"We're either going to disrupt ourselves or somebody's going to do it for us," says the hospital's vice president of innovation and information technology applications, noting the large number of healthcare organizations in the Houston area and the growing threat of competition from telehealth companies, payers, and retail giants like Amazon.
More than half—57%—of caregivers quit within the first 90 days of working for an agency, according to a report by MissionCare and the National Association for Home Care and Hospice. They're also seven times more likely to live at or below the poverty line.
Healthcare’s dire staffing shortages extend to unskilled workers, which means private duty agencies also are struggling to recruit and retain caregivers.
Aishling Dalton-Kelly is a private duty consultant, as well as president and CEO of Aishling Care Academy. Having previously owned an agency, Dalton-Kelly understands the importance and necessity of setting caregivers up for success and helping them see a future for themselves within an agency.
In part two, Aishling Dalton-Kelly reiterates the need to equip caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need, as well as what should be done so potential employees will see a fruitful career path in the sector.
Carol Campbell joined Ascension, a nonprofit Catholic health system headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, at the beginning of this year as the system's inaugural senior vice president of consumer experience. She now serves as senior vice president and chief experience officer for the health system, which serves 19 states through more than 140 hospitals, where she continues to lead the organization's consumer experience work.
Campbell recently connected with HealthLeaders to share what the first year in her role has looked like so far, what she's looking forward to leading, and how health systems can learn from other sectors when it comes to patient and consumer experience. She also shares the importance of the consumer experience in healthcare and ministry-driven organizations.
As Dana Erickson approaches her one-year mark as president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (Blue Cross MN), she shared with HealthLeaders her vision for better healthcare in Minnesota and the just-minted strategy that is designed to deliver place, plan, and industry-based solutions against healthcare's most persistent problems.
"Was it always my goal? No, I don't think so."
Erickson wasn't gunning to be CEO, but a combination of service, experience, and opportunity—and positions with Optum Health—positioned her for the role.
"I think it was something that did emerge over time," says Erickson, who served in four prior roles with Blue Cross MN before taking the top position.
Sabrina Martucci Johnson never planned on being a founder and CEO of a women’s healthcare company, but after identifying gaps in women's healthcare, she asked herself, “If not me, then who?"
"I'm not one of those people who always wanted to be a CEO," she says. "But I had a light bulb moment: if I don't do this, it's not going to happen."
Over the years, Johnson had always championed for women in her volunteer and charity work, supporting philanthropic activities surrounding STEM education for women, domestic violence awareness, and women's healthcare issues.
On the professional side, Johnson spent her entire career in the drug development industry, in a variety of roles. She began as a research scientist with Baxter Healthcare and went on to hold marketing and sales positions there.
To stay up to date with the amazing work that women healthcare leaders are up to, be sure to read HealthLeaders' Women in Leadership quarterly profiles. The next profiles report will be released on March 27.
Roxanna Gapstur, PhD, RN, shares strategies WellSpan Health uses to combat workforce challenges in the current competitive climate.
Hospital CEO participants in the annual American College of Healthcare Executives survey confirmed—not surprisingly— that workforce challenges were their top concern in 2022.
Roxanna Gapstur, PhD, RN, president and CEO of WellSpan Health, a nonprofit integrated health system serving central Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, reflects on the reality of this issue for healthcare organizations in Pennsylvania and across the country.
A competitive Pennsylvania market became fiercer after the fallout of the pandemic. Organizations like WellSpan are no longer just competing with other organizations in the state for patients, such as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Highmark Health, the parent company of Allegheny Health Network, they are also competing with staffing agencies and remote work opportunities across the country for potential staff.
Gapstur says, "In Pennsylvania, we lost about 230,000 [workers] during the pandemic. Nationally, women are returning at a lower rate than men to the workforce; the number is … a million women missing from the labor force. It's also created an issue with service workers and others. It's not just nursing that we're seeing shortages in—we're seeing shortages across job categories. Part of it is [also] accelerated retirements. We've seen our retirements nearly double here at WellSpan.”
"We've also seen a significant amount of inflation with staffing agencies and salaries increasing somewhere between 6% and 12% each year, which is a hefty number for most health systems to absorb," she adds.
"Like many health systems, we've been challenged to ensure that we have the right skillset with the right role throughout our system. We offer a full continuum of care, and we have had times where we've had to downsize or close a location periodically throughout the pandemic because of staffing."
In a recent HealthLeaders interview, Gapstur shares five steps that WellSpan has taken to combat workforce challenges and become more competitive in the healthcare workforce climate.
Combatting workforce challenges with a multi-pronged approach
When it comes to solving workforce challenges, hospitals and health systems must be creative in this competitive market. "It's definitely a multi-pronged approach," Gapstur said. "We have several strategies that we are currently employing."
1. Become a preferred employer
"We want to be a preferred employer in south-central Pennsylvania and nationally. Many of us now are recruiting and hiring people for remote positions from across the United States. Things like our diversity and inclusion wards, best workplace for women, being on the Forbes list for best workplaces, those are important things that we work to uphold a culture where people want to work."
2. Streamline recruitment
"Recruitment is part of our goal. We are recruiting and hiring by far more people than we've ever hired before. We've got more streamlined processes, and in a competitive market like this, we have to make sure that we're offering a value proposition that employees want."
3. Create a pipeline
"We've partnered with [more than 20 high schools, colleges, and universities] across our geography. We have specific health sciences programs that we underwrite and support both financially and with clinical preceptors and with faculty. We use several different venues and vehicles for those partnerships, as well as having our own medical education program here at WellSpan, where we have more than 180 in residency who are training with us.
"We've also started our own educational programs here at WellSpan. This fall, we're starting a surgical technologist program in addition to the multiple programs we already had, which was medical assistant, CRNA, respiratory therapy. We already had those programs in place when the pandemic began; we're now adding additional ones and we're expanding the slots in the ones that we already have."
4. Enact more efficient processes
"[The] challenge that remains is the redesign of work. We all know that work has changed significantly since the pandemic, and remote and hybrid working conditions are common in most organizations.
For those individuals who need to be on-site or providing face-to-face patient care, we are working [on] piloting innovative workforce solutions around people, process, and technology. Combining those three things in making more efficient processes, decreasing administrative burden, and leveraging AI and other technologies to make sure that we have the most efficient process, [and] we're offloading our clinical teams from administrative work.
There's a lot of talk about this around the country. We are heavily involved right now with virtual nursing approaches. Same with credentialing and HR functions; how would we use chatbots? We've done some of that during the pandemic because we have a small employee health team; we used chatbots to interview and get our folks back to work. Those are the kinds of things that we think are going to be the future in healthcare is this people, process, technology triad and how you put that together to support your workforce and ensure that you have the right kind of skills at the right place."
Next steps
Like other health systems' top leaders surveyed by the ACHE, solving financial and behavioral health issues is top of mind for WellSpan Health's CEO.
"Financial challenges are absolutely always something that we need to pay attention to. We have done a significant amount of work in the last two-and-a-half years to pull cost out of our infrastructure, mostly in our back-end areas, like our business services areas. That's been tremendously helpful for us, because we want to make sure that clinical-facing components are the face of WellSpan. But where can we be efficient using AI and other technologies on the back end?"
"We have recently expanded our inpatient bed capacity at WellSpan to accommodate the growing needs in our communities [surrounding behavioral health]. We have one of the largest behavioral health organizations in the United States, about 60% of the behavioral healthcare in south central Pennsylvania is provided by us. Our work is split 60/40: 60% adults, 40% kids. We're one of the few providers that [works with] children and adolescents. We want to be sure that we're keeping a pulse on how things are going in the behavioral health arena and that we're meeting as many of the needs as we can in our communities. The expansion of our inpatient bed capacity and some of the work that we're doing in our behavioral health area with telehealth has been helpful."
"Burnout is another focus for us here and well-being. We recently [conducted] our physician and advanced practice provider engagement survey, and it turned out one of our strengths of our system is that they feel supported, that they feel there's a lot of well-being efforts here at WellSpan. We're looking at that same thing with our middle management levels, so our nurse managers and our operational managers and all managers, to make sure that their work is efficient [and] that they feel supported."
The health systems first announced their intent to partner in September 2022.
MercyOne, a nonprofit Catholic health system and member of Trinity Health, announced this week that it has acquired Genesis Health System to create a "unified system to strengthen access and enhance care."
Genesis Health System, a nonprofit health system with six hospitals headquartered in Davenport Iowa, and all of its interests and operations joined the West Des Moines, Iowa-based system on March 1, according to a press release.
"We are excited to welcome Genesis to MercyOne and look forward to shaping a framework to enhance access to personalized, convenient healthcare across Eastern Iowa and Western Illinois," Bob Ritz, president and CEO of MercyOne, said in a statement. "Together, we are stronger and will deliver the highest quality care and the best patient experience to all those we serve."
The deal was first announced in September 2022, when Genesis Health System and MercyOne signed a letter of intent to "develop a strategic partnership" between the health systems. Since then, the organizations said that they have taken the necessary steps to finalize the agreement, including necessary regulatory filings.
The Genesis Health System board of directors unanimously voted MercyOne as its choice for a partner following an exploration process that began in December 2021.
"As part of MercyOne, Genesis will be able to leverage the skill, talent and scale of national and regional resources while retaining our local leadership and focus," Doug Cropper, president and CEO of Genesis Health System, said in a statement. "We will deepen our commitment to quality, safety and patient experience, and strengthen our workforce retention and recruitment efforts. By joining MercyOne, Genesis will continue our ability to grow, thrive, and deliver more integrated care in the region."
As part of the deal, the Genesis Health Services Foundation, a nonprofit organization promoting charitable support for the health system's communities in the greater Quad Cities region of Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf Iowa, will continue to operate as part of the unified health system.
Genesis Philanthropy, a nonprofit organization focused on prevention and wellness in the region, will operate independently from the health system, under the new name of The Better Health Foundation. As part of the deal, Genesis Health System provided the organization with $40 million to help its future endeavors to be one of the region's preeminent granting organizations. The Better Health Foundation will be fully operational beginning July 1, 2023.
Turnover rates hit a record high last month, almost reaching the previous high in August 2018 when 24 hospital CEOs exited their roles.
Hospitals experienced a high rate of turnover in January 2023, a month that typically experiences the highest turnover rate during the year.
In January, 23 hospital CEOs left their posts according to the latest Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. CEO Turnover Report, leading the turnover rates for all sectors tracked by the firm for that month.
This is the highest hospital CEO turnover rate since August 2018, when 24 hospital CEOs left their post during the month of January. Of the 112 CEO exits tracked in January, hospital CEO exits made up 21% of the total exits.
"January has the highest number of CEO exits on average than any other month, as companies assess their previous fiscal year and make plans for the future," Andrew Challenger, SVP of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., said in a statement.
Reasons for exits include CEOs stepping down to serve in other positions within the same company either as a board member or in another C-suite level role, leaving the organization altogether for a different role, or because their positions were terminated.
In December 2022, only six hospital CEOs made role changes, bringing the total amount of hospital CEO exits up to 103 for the year, a decline from the 112 exits made in 2021.
"Hospitals and Hospital Systems have undergone incredible challenges over the last three years as the pandemic raged, burned out healthcare workers, and pushed resources to the limits. Some of these leaders themselves are likely burned out as well, while others are moving to different hospitals to execute skills they've gained during those difficult times," Challenger said.
Behind the hospital sector, the government/nonprofit sector experienced 18 CEOs leave their posts. Additionally, the technology sector announced 17 CEO changes while the financial sector announced 16.
Healthcare marketing execs share steps you can take right now to become more consumer-focused in your marketing strategies.
The consumer is king according to healthcare marketing executives.
At the beginning of the year, HealthLeaders interviewed numerous healthcare marketing executives about what their top focus will be this year. While the answers vary, the consumer remains at the center of all their marketing strategies.
Coming up on March 22, we'll continue the conversation during the HealthLeaders Marketing and Consumer Experience NOW Summit, which will feature panel discussions on healthcare marketing and the consumer experience. You can sign up to attend the free virtual eventhere.
HealthLeaders asked the NOW Summit panelists: what is one action step healthcare organizations can take right now to be more consumer-focused?
Answers have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Improve the customer experience as an enterprise-wide initiative
"There must be an organization-wide understanding that studying and improving the customer experience is not just marketing's job. I am fortunate because the entire City of Hope organization understands that the cancer journey is a highly personalized experience. Although the goal is survivorship, there are many cancer types and stages of the disease, and everyone coming to us for care is provided with an individualized approach.
As a marketer, my job is to ensure this patient-centric focus is reflected in our brand and experienced by everyone, from those just learning about our organization to the grateful patients who are our most effective spokespeople and advocates. With everyone at City of Hope so focused on the patient, we have built a strong brand and ensured that consumers are confident they are choosing services that will meet their needs."
— Nisha Morris, VP of marketing and communications, City of Hope Orange County
Meet your consumers where they are
"Healthcare needs to understand where consumers are in a post-Covid world. The world has changed irreversibly since 2019, and consumers have also changed. In a post-Covid world, consumers are more aware than ever of the fragility of health but also the power of health. It fuels our passions, our loves, our careers, and our relationships. Do health systems understand their customers' mindset? Are they prepared to redefine the healthcare journey?"
— Ramon Soto, SVP, chief marketing and communications officer, Northwell Health
Be intentional when communicating with your consumers
"One thing we know about healthcare is that the language surrounding it is complex, confusing, and sometimes jarring. With issues from literacy to empathy, the words and phrases we use in health care are often at odds with our healing mission. They may lack humanity, hope, and the personal connection that we know are beneficial to individuals seeking our care. We can create a movement within our organizations to humanize our language, remove jargon, acronyms, and insensitive phrases, and opt for relationship-building words. Words have real power and we, too, have the power to use them intentionally, responsibly, and for the higher purpose of creating connection and understanding.”
— Chrisie Scott, SVP, chief marketing officer, Virtua Health
Listen to your consumers
“The first step towards building a consumer-focused healthcare organization is building out a robust consumer insight capability. Only by tapping directly into a representative sample of consumers can you improve your understanding of the consumer experience priorities that will drive decision making. While there are often keen insights and important details that can be gained from consulting the various stakeholders inside our industry, marketers must lean into the learnings gained by hearing directly from average consumers - their intended audiences.”
— Eric Steinberger, chief marketing officer, Atlantic Health System
Be more accessible
"Providing more and more access points to care is important to consumers as they navigate their care. Whether it be physical, online, or through marketing portals, creating access is key."
— Nick Ragone, EVP of Marketing, Ascension
Editor's note: This story was updated on March 9, 2023.
Joseph "Jody" White will step down from his leadership positions at Lowell General Hospital and Tufts Medicine.
Massachusetts-based Lowell General Hospital announced Thursday that its CEO will be retiring this year.
Following a more than twenty-year-long tenure at the hospital, Joseph "Jody" White, MBA, FACHE, will retire from his roles as CEO of Lowell General Hospital and EVP of Tufts Medicine in September 2023. Lowell General Hospital is an affiliate of Tufts Medicine.
"For 20 years, Jody has been a passionate advocate for transformative change in healthcare – not just here in Lowell but across the Commonwealth," Ray Anstiss, Chair of Lowell General Hospital’s board of trustees said in a statement. "He has a powerful ability to bring people together, build consensus, and accelerate challenging work, while never losing sight of the importance of supporting and celebrating the physicians, clinicians, and other staff working the front lines every day."
White joined Lowell General Hospital in 2003 to lead as EVP and COO. He was named president in 2013, and then became CEO of Lowell General and Circle Health, an integrated community healthcare delivery system, in 2017.
In September 2022, White stepped down from his role as president of Lowell General Hospital to focus on serving in an expanded leadership role with Tufts Medicine and assumed the role of EVP of Tufts Medicine. Amy Hoey assumed the role of president of Lowell General Hospital where she continues to oversee the hospital's daily operations.
"Jody White is the consummate healthcare leader and colleague, and he has been instrumental to Tufts Medicine’s success in coming together as a health system," Tufts Medicine president and CEO, Michael Dandorph, said in a statement. "As with everything he does, Jody has been so thoughtful about his transition and created a long-term plan to ensure our patients, communities, and the entire Lowell General Hospital team are supported with great care and are positioned for future success. I can’t thank Jody enough for his wise counsel, unmatched optimism, and friendship. I am so grateful for his many years of service and positive impact on our community."
"Serving as the CEO of Lowell General Hospital and having the opportunity to work alongside such a dedicated team has been an honor and privilege," White in a statement. "I have had an incredible career filled with inspirational work and people, and I couldn’t be prouder of our team’s dedication to putting patients first every day. I have every confidence that our fantastic team, under the leadership of President Amy Hoey, will continue to drive this vital work forward."
Jennifer Bollinger will serve as senior vice president, chief consumer and brand officer for the northern California-based health system.
Sutter Health recently announced it has a new marketing executive joining the nonprofit health system to lead the system's brand strategy and enhance the consumer experience.
Jennifer Bollinger, who previously served as senior vice president and chief consumer officer for Louisiana-based Ochsner Health, will serve as senior vice president and chief consumer brand officer for Sutter Health.
In her new role, Bollinger will lead the northern California-based health system's marketing, communications, and patient experience teams to "further elevate Sutter Health's brand and increase consumer engagement," according to a press release.
"Jennifer Bollinger is a national leader in developing and implementing consumer engagement strategies that increase patients' use of digital tools that seamlessly connect them to personal care at the right place and right time," Sutter Health's president and CEO, Warner Thomas, said in a statement. "She is a collaborative, values-driven leader with a proven track record of building high-caliber teams. Her extensive marketing and communications knowledge will help to elevate Sutter Health’s brand, enhance patient satisfaction, and grow digital connection and engagement."
Bollinger spent 11 years in leadership roles in public relations and corporate communications for Ochsner, where she led teams that launched multi-channel and industry award-winning branding, communications, and engagement initiatives.
Prior to joining Ochsner, she spent more than 20 years leading strategies for several marketing and communications agencies.
"I'm energized by the opportunity ahead of us to dramatically transform the way consumers experience healthcare," Bollinger said in a statement. "I’ll be working with teams across Sutter Health to advance an even more personal, connected and convenient experience that meets the modern consumer expectations of our patients at every touchpoint."
The COO of NYP's Lower Manhattan Hospital heads the health system's LGBTQ Task Force, which focuses on diversity and inclusion work for patients, staff, and the broader community.
NewYork Presbyterian (NYP) is an academic health system that serves diverse communities across all five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, and Hudson Valley. There are more than 520,000 people from all walks of life living in those areas, including those with different backgrounds, ethnicities, economic statuses, gender identities, and sexualities.
NYP has numerous task forces to support the communities it serves, including the LGBTQ Task Force, which was created in 2015 to celebrate and support its lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities.
Juan Mejia, MPH, who serves as senior vice president and COO of the system's Lower Manhattan Hospital, leads the task force's work in creating a respectful and understanding environment for patients, staff, and the broader community.
Mejia recently spoke with HealthLeaders about the diversity and inclusion strategies and initiatives the task force has implemented across the system.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: How was the LGBTQ Task Force created in 2015 and why is it needed?
Juan Mejia: [At] our hospital, we've always [been] focused on diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives and efforts. In 2015, we realized that we needed more of a focused effort specifically around our LGBTQ community. We needed a focused approach in reviewing our policies, programs, and training to make sure that not only is it meeting the requirements of what we should be having in our hospitals, but like everything else at NewYork Presbyterian, we want to be able to lead; that's the main reason we put together this LGBTQ task force.
Task force [is] probably not the best word; it's more of a steering committee that focuses on this across the organization. It is a subgroup of our bigger D&I strategy and is one of the many pillars that fall under our D&I strategy.
From a community perspective, we want to make sure that we have a place where patients feel welcome and where they feel like they belong. If you think about health justice in general, one of the biggest barriers is that oftentimes patients may have access to a doctor, but if they feel like they don't belong [or] don't feel like they're respected, oftentimes patients may not get the care that they need. That applies to our LGBTQ community [and] to other patients who may have other disconnects. It's our responsibility to make sure that we create an environment where everyone feels like they belong.
The primary driver of why we're doing this, especially in New York City, [is] we have a diverse population. We have to ensure that we create a [diverse] environment.
HL: What is the task force's mission and what initiatives has the health system launched to serve that mission and the patients?
Mejia: The mission is to provide guidance for numerous initiatives impacting our LGBTQ community. That community is defined as our patients, our employees, [and] our external community.
{We have an] ongoing review of our policies to make sure that [they] are inclusive for our patients, and that includes not just our patient policies, but also our workplace policies. Do we have workplace discrimination policies that are very specific to our LGBTQ employees to make sure that we have protections? That policy also extends to looking at whether our employee benefits are inclusive of [what] our LGBTQ employees might need.
Staff training and development are the top priorities of the task force, as is ensuring that we're continuing to provide opportunities for our staff to learn about the ongoing importance or evolution of care delivery models for our LGBTQ patients. We have a number of modules that we do online [and] a lot of in-person training through something that we call 'Dialogues and Diversity.' Ongoing training and doing it in different mechanisms is important.
[We also do] a lot of work around community engagement and community programming. So, ensuring that we're partnering closely with local community-based organizations and that we understand their needs and can support their mission as well. And when appropriate, being out in the community and providing care alongside our community partners to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our local community.
HL: What policy work has the task force done?
Mejia: We have a workplace discrimination policy that was generic. In the last eight or so years, we modified the policy to be very explicit that we cannot discriminate against LGBTQ employees. We were modifying the policy to make sure that it's very specific to what we do.
We have a protocol around room assignments, specifically for patients that are transgender. As an example, we assign beds based on the patient's gender identity. That's an example of a policy that was modified numerous years ago.
The good news here is there are a lot of best practices that are shared through the LGBTQ community. [There are] a lot of tools that the Human Rights Campaign has that many of us can go to. We don't always have to reinvent the wheel; there are a lot of great resources out there that we have used in the past. It's important that we share a lot of these best practices … by going to conferences [and learning] what other hospitals across the nation [are] doing that we can emulate to make sure that we continue to be leaders in this.
HL: How can other healthcare organizations follow your lead?
Mejia: The topic of health equity and health justice is one of our priorities, and when it comes to the mission of our hospital, we talk about health justice all the time. It always starts with our CEO down to the rest of the organization, understanding what is happening in the communities around us, and having open dialogues with our staff about this.
As healthcare leaders, we should all be talking about [and] sharing best practices around how to create an inclusive environment for our diverse populations. At the end of the day, the main reason to do this is for our patients, to make sure that our patients in our community feel like they have an environment where they belong, and they can comfortably and safely come to get care.
One best practice that we rolled out two years ago is our medical record. We were able to update our patient ID policies; The patient's ID band [is now] able to show the patient's preferred name as opposed to a patient's legal name. For a cisgender patient, that may not mean a lot because my legal name and the name that I use happen to be [the same], but if a person is transgender, the legal name and the preferred name may not be the same.
For numerous reasons, we previously were not able to show a patient's preferred name and we now are, which means that when our patients are interacting with staff, our team always knows the patient's preferred name based on the patient ID. [This] allows us to effectively and respectfully communicate with our patients.
Editor's note: This story was updated on March 2, 2023.
Mercy's SVP and chief strategic ventures officer, Ajay Pathak, details how the organization's plans to join together may impact the health systems, their patients, and their employees.
At the end of January, Missouri-based nonprofit health systems Mercy and SoutheastHEALTH announced they had signed a letter of intent to "join together."
If the deal succeeds, SoutheastHEALTH would join the Mercy health system as a full member, with the intent of making SoutheastHEALTH a "regional hub in southeast Missouri and the greater tri-state area it serves," the system's president and CEO, Ken Bateman, said in a press release.
"Mercy is the best strategic fit for both entities and this vision. With a proven track record in community health, Mercy fully supports strengthening access to affordable primary and specialty health care for all residents in the communities we serve," Bateman said.
"We look forward to the opportunity to provide even more access to high-quality, lower-cost health care for the Cape Girardeau community," president and CEO of Mercy, Steve Mackin, said in a press release. "By joining together, we will utilize Mercy's extensive network of resources and services to further position SoutheastHEALTH as the regional hub for industry-leading health care. We are very excited to have the potential to serve in this part of Missouri."
In a recent interview with HealthLeaders, Mercy's SVP and chief strategic ventures officer, Ajay Pathak, MBA, MPH, shared how the organizations believe the deal will benefit both health systems, their communities, and their employees.
"For Mercy to get called in by Southeast and have an opportunity to partner with them, align with them, and provide care to the Cape Girardeau region in Missouri and the geography beyond … that's something that we're incredibly excited about," Pathak told HealthLeaders. "We can all recognize from our executive level on down through our care teams the value of being able to align with an organization and come together."
Keeping costs low
"Mercy is a healthcare ministry and organization that has always been focused on our patients and seeing the person in every patient," Pathak said. "In every community that we serve, we are the high-quality provider as well as the lowest cost provider. In many senses [that's] the calling card for Mercy; how we best serve our communities to provide the highest quality care, but yet do that from a cost of care perspective that's helping meet the needs of our community, our patients, consumers of health care, employees, [and] employers in those communities."
"We see this opportunity with SoutheastHEALTH to partner with them around their tradition of high-quality healthcare [and] bring that total cost of care model and some scale and size to be able to impact patients. That's where we feel this relationship is really going to have its greatest impact, is in the community," he said.
Workforce benefits
"Employees of Southeast now know that they're part of a broader and a bigger network of care across not just the state of Missouri, but across a large geography of the Midwest," Pathak said. Southeast's workforce will "have clinical resources, colleagues, clinical councils, and best practices to tap into, that's going to be a great opportunity for them to expand, grow, come together, and build a network."
"This relationship is predicated on a strategic opportunity to serve this community and grow services and build access; we see a very strong growth opportunity in the region," he added.
The next steps
"We're working very actively towards the definitive agreement. As we get to the end of the calendar year, bringing this relationship formally to an integration, the teams will continue to step through the processes together," Pathak said.
"SoutheastHEALTH's board, leadership team, physicians, and employees [were] very engaged and active in ultimately choosing who was the right partner. We're excited for the work in front of us over the next several months as we work to help them become part of our Mercy healthcare system and our ministry, and ultimately support the strategy they have around growing access in the community in Cape Girardeau."
Chief communications and marketing officer, Skip Hidlay, shares successful marketing initiatives on key areas to advance the organization's strategic and operational goals.
Editor's note: This article appears in the June 2023 edition of HealthLeaders magazine.
Healthcare marketing has experienced a paradigm shift due to, in part, the pandemic, critical staffing issues, and changing consumer expectations.
"Right now, every marketing, communications, and digital strategy professional in healthcare would undoubtedly say we're in uncharted territory right now," says Skip Hidlay a healthcare marketing executive. "This is an unprecedented period of time. … Those of us in marketing leadership roles … have had to pivot and serve the organization in different ways and modify our playbooks."
Hidlay is the chief communications and marketing officer for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center (OSU Wexner Medical Center) in Columbus Ohio, the Ohio State Health Science Colleges, the Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital, and the Richard J. Solove Research Institute.
The organization, which is halfway through fiscal year '23, has had a lot of marketing and brand success so far this year. The team has focused on numerous initiatives and campaigns, which start at top of funnel and run through 30- and 60-second TV spots, YouTube pre-roll, and digital tactics.
Hidlay recently spoke with HealthLeaders about successful marketing initiatives that have helped advance the organization's strategic and operational goals.
1. Recruiting staff
"We got into the work of recruitment marketing in partnership with our HR talent acquisition team well before the pandemic began; we began in this work nearly five years ago. That put us in a very good position to expand that work and accelerate the ability that we have to create strong marketing campaigns [to help] recruit more nurses [and] clinicians, as well as frontline staff, environmental services, security, food service, all very pressure-packed positions. We tripled the amount of spending that we've put into recruitment marketing this year. We added two additional staff members, so we have three full-time marketers devoted to recruitment marketing, also supported by our creative services team.
"We created a 30-second TV spot that we ran aggressively in the market, interspersed with other brand marketing that we're doing. We leaned into the idea of what we call 'Ohio State Buckeye pride,' encouraging people to join a great team. We improved the employer branding content across all of our web and social media platforms. We built dedicated career pages and optimized them for both paid and organic Google search traffic. We launched a digital marketing campaign that produced 6.1 million impressions and 62,000 clicks to our website's careers pages, and then nearly 14,000 clicks into the application section of our HR system. As part of the campaign, we produced more than 25 video testimonials from nurses and people in all kinds of different roles about why they like to work at Ohio State and the value that they get from that.
Nursing hiring in the first six months of the [fiscal] year is up 15% and it's at its highest point in eight years. We're still challenged with retention and so we're hiring more and more nurses and the slope of the curve is coming down."
2. Communicating internally
"We've continued to build internal faculty and staff engagement. [There is] a lot of effort on instilling what we call "Buckeye pride" in the entirety of the faculty and frontline staff and continuing to build strong line of sight from the office of the CEO down to the front line."
3. Promoting service lines
"We also want to focus on what we call our big three service lines: Cancer, heart and vascular, and neurosciences. We developed and launched a new cancer campaign to promote the James Cancer Hospital and the Comprehensive Cancer Center at Ohio State. We got that done and launched right at the start of the new fiscal year, in the fall. We always try to bring out new creative [ideas] around the start of football season because we are obviously a major advertiser on Ohio State football. We have a new heart and vascular campaign that launched [the first week of February] for heart month, and we're putting the finishing touches on a neurosciences campaign that will launch in March. We're delivering big brand building around these marquee areas for advanced care with Ohio State being what we call 'the clear choice' for advanced care in these areas."
4. Supporting the health system's ambulatory growth
"In the summer of 2021, we opened a 250,000-square-foot multi-specialty clinic in the growing suburb of New Albany, Ohio, on the northeast side of the Columbus metro area. This year, we opened a 270,000-square-foot multi-specialty clinic in the suburb of Dublin, Ohio. Our team has been deeply focused on building comprehensive multi-channel campaigns to support the opening of both those facilities, as well as the continued growth of all of our outpatient services. Our goals were the system's goals for growth in net new patients. [Approximately] 35% of our net new patients were having their first experience in our advanced immediate care clinics that we opened, so then we developed an advanced immediate care campaign … so that growth is continued."
5. Creating and maintaining a presence on Google and social media
"January 24, 2022, we launched a brand new brand storytelling and content engine website called Ohio State Health & Discovery. We've built an expanded brand storytelling team, involving creating multi-immersive multimedia content. [It has] writers, photography, [and] videography working together, and we've had some tremendous success in that. Through the end of December, we had achieved 3.9 million users/visitors [and] 4.9 million pageviews. Nearly 70% of that traffic has come from Google organic search, so we designed the whole site to be uber optimized in Google."
"The other thing we've been experimenting with is the new digital-first global storytelling platform at Google called Google Web Stories. It's sort of an extension of Instagram reels. The beauty of those is they are forever at Google, and they're prioritized in search."
"The other piece that we've been doing is expanding our video content because now Google search is showing images and video content in addition to written content. A big trend we are trying to stay up on is what is changing in Google Search and make whatever modifications or pivots we need to our own processes so that we can make sure all of our content is immensely findable in Google."
"We have a strong social media team and we're active on all the platforms you would expect. In 2022, we did launch our first two Tik-Tok channels for the Wexner Medical Center [with 11.3K followers and 163.1K likes] and for the Ohio State College of Medicine [with 606 followers and 7659 likes], and we've had some great success there."
6. Keeping a strong focus on strategic marketing imperatives
"My whole high-level philosophy is that highly effective marketing, communications, and digital teams should always focus on four strategic imperatives."
Building the brand. "Constantly building the brand locally, regionally, and nationally so that you're a trusted brand and a brand devoted to creating a world-class patient experience."
Growing business volumes. "Even at a time with capacity constraints, there are things you can do to grow business volumes."
Creating engagement among key audiences. This includes "patients, their families, prospective patients, general healthcare news consumers, philanthropists, government. Your internal audiences are your physicians, nurses, other clinicians, [and] frontline staff."
Advancing the strategy of the organization. "[This] sometimes may be very different [from] building brand or growing business volumes."
"Every year, what I do with our team is we develop an annual operating plan that aligns with the organization's long-range strategic plan and its annual operating goals. Our work has to be completely aligned with the strategy and the organization's operational goals. Our role is to advance that."