Todd Hofheins started his role as CFO of Aurora, Colo-based UCHealth in June, having previously served as COO of Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist Health. It’s this dual finance and operations understanding that has shaped how he approaches his leadership and decision making.
“Being able to be a COO actually deepened my appreciation and understanding of the complexities of day-to-day operations and face-to-face patient care,” Mr. Hofheins told Becker’s. “I believe I’m coming in with a different level of curiosity, not just about what the financial opportunity is or the implications, but [thinking], what will that do to our organizational culture? What will that do to our access? What are the longer term implications of a financial challenge?”
However, this is not Mr. Hofheins’ first rodeo with healthcare finance. Prior to serving as Adventist’s COO, he also served as the system’s CFO.
His experience in both roles come as the COO role in healthcare is seeing a shift. While some systems are combining the role with other leadership positions, others are eliminating it completely.
“Here at UCHealth, we don’t have a COO role,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a focus on operations … what it’s really done is it’s lifted the organizational focus on operations for a number of us. I think that depends largely on what the structure is and the cultures of an organization. I like the fact that it makes operations [part of] all of our jobs, which I think is important.”
Three months into his new role, Mr. Hofheins has outlined multiple priorities, including modernizing reporting and analytics to expand real-time data access, supporting UCHealth’s strategic growth in areas like value-based care and virtual health and recruiting the next generation of financial leaders.
UCHealth has even created a finance residency program that rotates recent graduates for around three years through areas like analytics, IT and revenue cycle.
“It gives us a chance to learn from them, because they’ve got capabilities that I don’t have with my experience, but at the same time, we’re able to help them understand the ecosystem of healthcare.”
Despite the ongoing changes in healthcare and ongoing industry recruitment challenges, Mr. Hofheins is bullish on its future.
“If you’re somebody that likes to do something that is relevant to your community, important to your family and you like to learn, there’s nowhere better than healthcare finance.”
