Keck Medicine of USC CFO Christian Pass knows how the other side of the healthcare continuum operates.
Prior to joining the Los Angeles-based health system Jan. 12, Mr. Pass served as president of Optum’s provider and payvider payments.
“I believe that understanding where value is created in an organization’s business model allows me to be a better partner,” he told Becker’s. “Healthcare works best when everyone involved — providers, hospitals and health systems and payers — is rewarded fairly for the value they create, especially as it relates to improving patient outcomes.”
Mr. Pass spoke with Becker’s about how he is leveraging his experience at Optum, his top priorities at Keck and how he is navigating healthcare’s biggest headwinds.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: What is your top priority as CFO of Keck Medicine?
Christian Pass: My primary focus is to increase financial resiliency by accounting for possible challenges in healthcare, including increasing labor costs and federal funding cuts. This helps ensure financial growth and stability, empowering the organization to continue delivering the highest level of patient care. The key is to build on our core strengths, such as tertiary and quaternary care, where our ability to manage high-acuity cases differentiates us and supports sustainable growth.
One way we’re creating resiliency includes expanding access to specialty care, bringing advanced treatment closer to home for patients with complex conditions across key areas of Southern California. This supports sustainable patient volume growth by improving access and patient retention while aligning our capacity with rising demand for convenient specialty care. For example, Keck Medicine opened a new four-story, 100,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art medical office building that more than doubles Keck Medicine’s capacity to deliver care in Pasadena, Calif.
We’re also securing arrangements to serve as the specialty partner of choice for certain networks that connect us with patients who need the tertiary or quaternary care we’re known for. For example, we collaborate with Optum to provide care to patients who need advanced urologic medical treatment.
A key component of our resiliency planning involves coordinating with the Keck School of Medicine of USC and the university to align on shared priorities, like cutting-edge research and new technological advancements, while maintaining the financial health of our respective organizations.
Q: What do you see as the biggest headwinds facing health system finances right now and how do you plan to address them?
CP: Health systems are currently facing a variety of challenges, particularly regarding affordability, like high labor costs, an aging population with more healthcare needs, the cost shift to commercial insurance and growing inflation.
Keck Medicine of USC has proactively counteracted rising costs by identifying areas of efficiencies and easily increasing cost savings. We reviewed all our existing vendor contracts for potential savings. For example, we consolidated our in-clinic translation services that resulted in approximately 20% savings from the previous contract. We’re also renegotiating contracts with several payers to ensure we’re more fairly compensated for the services we provide to patients.
These savings allow us to make additional high impact investments in our workforce, new technologies and research initiatives.
Q: What did you learn from your time at Optum that will help you as a health system CFO? Do you think you gained any unique insights from that experience that other health system CFOs might not have? Has your experience with payvider financial models at Optum changed how you view contracting strategies or payer negotiations?
CP: The single greatest thing I learned in my previous role that I continue to leverage is intimately understanding how the rest of the healthcare continuum operates.
Importantly, I believe that understanding where value is created in an organization’s business model allows me to be a better partner. Healthcare works best when everyone involved — providers, hospitals and health systems, and payers — is rewarded fairly for the value they create, especially as it relates to improving patient outcomes. If we can better design payment systems that align those incentives, I feel we can strengthen payer-provider relationships.
I also always try to understand other parties’ perspectives to help find better, more creative solutions and look forward to continuing this after seeing its benefits during my previous role.
Q: Why did you decide now was the right time to return to a health system CFO role? What interested you in Keck Medicine of USC, specifically?
CP: Returning to a CFO role was an easy choice because Keck Medicine has an incredible leadership team and staff, a strong and positive company culture and the prestige of USC backing it. I spent time with the leadership team and they made it an easy choice because their vision for the future of the organization truly resonated with me. I’m honored to help support Keck Medicine’s central mission to provide patients with access to compassionate, state-of-the-art care they often can’t find anywhere else.
Q: What is your view on investment in AI or automation tools within the finance and revenue cycle functions?
CP: AI-powered tools within healthcare finance may hold great potential if they can match the complexity of our work. We need tools that help solve the challenges unique to the healthcare industry that enhance our ability to develop nuanced solutions in less time. Advancements in this direction could be incredibly valuable in helping the healthcare industry advance at a more similar pace of other industries, which has historically been difficult.
One way our team is using AI tools is to produce annual budget forecasts. These reports allow us to make more informed decisions about strategic investments to make and identify areas we should consider redirecting funds from based on the most likely biggest drivers of our business. While tools like these can be very helpful, we also keep them under continual reevaluation to ensure we remain responsible shepherds of new technology.
Q: What metrics beyond traditional financial KPIs will you use to measure success in your role over the next year?
CP: My motto is, “celebrate and accelerate.” My goal is to help ensure that we use Keck Medicine’s many accomplishments to continue building confidence in our teams and foster an environment that champions resilience and meticulous planning combined with some flexibility when a plan needs to be updated along the way.
Beyond traditional financial KPIs, I measure success by how consistently we execute and improve against initiative-level goals. For each effort, we define clear clinical and operational metrics — such as quality outcomes, patient referrals or efficiency gains — and track the percentage of those initiatives that meet or exceed their targets.
Equally important is how quickly we respond when performance falls short. I look at time-to-adjustment as a key indicator, which quantifies how fast we identify gaps, implement changes and get initiatives back on track. Over time, I also evaluate the volume and impact of optimizations we implement, as a measure of our ability to continuously improve rather than operate at a steady state.
Taken together, these metrics reflect whether we’re not just delivering results, but building a disciplined, responsive organization that learns quickly, adapts effectively and sustains performance over time.
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