Before the end of every year, you’ll find the women of many households heads down in one activity – choosing their family’s health care plan.
In my family, this is one of my roles. I also arrange the medical and dental appointments for my three daughters and am the human equivalent of 911 for any household medical emergency. As my parents start to age, I suspect their care will fall to my sister and me, as my in-laws’ care will likely be coordinated by my three sisters-in-law. All this is to say that at least in my world, health care responsibilities rest largely on the shoulders of those of us with two X chromosomes.
Consequently, statistics such as women making 80 percent of health care decisions, or being 10 times more likely than men to stay at home with a sick child, come as no surprise. What is a surprise is the woeful underrepresentation of women in health care leadership positions, despite the fact that women comprise 78 percent of the health care workforce. According to Rock Health, women make up just 34 percent of executives and 27 percent of board members at the top 100 US hospitals, 21 percent of board members at Fortune 500 health care companies, and six percent of CEOs of funded digital health companies.
As the health care industry undergoes a dramatic shift toward a patient-centric experience, women’s empathetic and inclusive style of leadership is needed more than ever. So, how do we encourage women to seek health care leadership opportunities? Here are three ways that we can immediately start advancing women in health care.
Start with Mentoring. For many people, it can be hard to visualize a career path to the executive level of health care leadership without a mentor. But, let’s first acknowledge that mentorship works both ways. So to all the women who are health care leaders now, know that you are in high demand. But if you simply wait to be approached, you may never get the opportunity to be a mentor, as 67 percent of professional women acknowledged in a recent LinkedIn survey. Find a mentee at a networking event such as the Rock Health Women’s Summit, your company or simply by joining and asking around in networking groups such as Hygge Health or Healthcare IT on LinkedIn.
To be an effective mentor, it is important to be clear about what you can offer and what potential mentees should bring to the table. If your mentee has a passion project she is working on that needs an executive sponsor, for example, this could be a strong foundation for a mentoring relationship. By defining the focus of your relationship at the start, you’ll ensure that your time is productive and, most importantly, that your mentee is poised for professional growth and advancement.
Have Confidence. How do we get the 78 percent of women already working in health care to stand behind their resumes and grow their experience? The challenge of women leaning in, and taking credit for hard work while also taking on the risk of new leadership positions is definitely present in health care.
I was reminded recently of the importance of confidence in the success equation when I joined a panel discussion on how to increase representation of women on corporate boards. A recurring theme was the notion that women are less likely to put themselves out there for a leadership role or plum assignment if they don’t feel ready, whereas men generally feel comfortable doing so. This thinking has created what we’re seeing in health care today – far more men than women in leadership roles. Changing this equation is as vital for health care as it is for other organizations. While several global studies conducted by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Columbia University have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability, for health care, female and male leaders will be critical in building an ecosystem that works for everyone, from clinicians to patients and caregivers from all walks of life.
Clear More Paths to a Career in Health: A third way to develop more female health care leaders is to encourage those from other fields to transfer their skills to the important and exciting work happening in the industry. This is how I came to health care in a leadership position. After a successful career as a technology entrepreneur, I dove into the deep end of an industry new to me, resume in hand.
How it happened was a bit serendipitous. I had founded a global financial technology company, Anachron, which was ultimately sold to ING Bank. My plan was to become a stay-at-home mom, raise my daughters and never look back. I soon discovered however, that I was a much better working mom and missed the work-related challenges and technology development I had just scratched the surface of as an entrepreneur. At the time, we were living in Kansas City and Cerner, a health care technology company, was one of three main technology employers in the market.
I took a position as a director at Cerner and was immediately compelled by the mission to contribute to the systemic improvement of health care delivery and the health of communities. At that point, health care in America was struggling, paper records were everywhere and the opportunity for advanced technological solutions that were well designed and easy to use was massive. Getting started in health care took perseverance, the learning curve was steep and there were many meetings where I wrote down three-letter health care acronyms to look up later, but the research and critical thinking skills I developed in technology provided a foundation from which I could build. I quickly found that adding value with clinicians requires the same passion and tenacity that it takes to engage a room full of engineers. The time I spent understanding health care regulations and the drivers behind them compelled me to learn more, which ultimately made my contributions more effective and enabled me to take on new challenges.
For women interested in learning more about what being a health care leader entails, Healthcare Collaboration’s audio conferences for this exact audience is an excellent resource. For those looking to re-enter the workforce after a gap in their resume, there are many organizations such as iRelaunch and reacHIRE that offer coaching, training, career services and networking events, and match professionals with employers recruiting from this talent pool. And for anyone looking for a career change, visiting health care company websites (Humana and Transcend Insights are hiring) and reading through job descriptions is an easy way to discover what skills and experiences are in demand and transferrable from other industries.
Our health care system is undergoing momentous change to repair industry ills that have gone on far too long. We need new leaders who reflect the diversity of the population health care serves. Having more women in health care leadership roles, and thus a greater depth of experience and opinions, can only benefit the industry in its quest to deliver better care.
By Kristin Russel, Vice President of Marketing & Product Management, Transcend Insights
The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.