As uncertainties and rapid changes continue to rear their heads in the healthcare industry, hospital and health system finance leadership roles are expanding far beyond traditional number-crunching. From emphasizing cross-functional collaboration and strategic leadership to homing in on solid communication, top leaders are charting a path to remain future-ready.
At Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, CFO Clay Ashdown told Becker’s balancing financial discipline with innovation and guiding teams through uncertainty helps enable strategic investments in evolving technology and care models.
“People need to bring their own unique sets of skills, training and expertise to the table, because that is a really necessary data point to inform these decisions,” he said. “The silo approach that perhaps existed in prior iterations … where you have a finance leader specifically looking through a finance lens, an HR leader looking through an HR lens, a communications person looking through a communications lens … I think ultimately, people need to bring those unique perspectives, but really problem solve as a collective. “
Finance leaders are increasingly working with their technology teams as organizations rely more on integrated platforms and digital tools.
“I think the CFO role is more heavily aligned with the CIO than maybe it has in the past, primarily because everything is technology-driven, and revenue cycle and back-office functions are all technology platforms,” Hershey, Pa.-based Penn State Health’s CFO Tracy Moyer told Becker’s.
A shift toward cross-functional thinking and collective problem-solving is also echoed throughout other health systems, with CFOs increasingly being expected to balance a broad understanding of organizational operations with deep expertise.
At Lawrence, Kan.-based LMH Health, CFO Robert Chestnut stressed the importance of creating that subject-matter expertise, while also looking at the bigger picture and developing solutions, particularly on the labor-shortage front.
“To try and understand all the moving parts is challenging, it takes a village,” Mr. Chestnut told Becker’s. “It takes all of my colleagues that work with me in the finance group, our operations directors, our physicians – it’s a big ecosystem to manage.”
Similarly, at Marlton, N.J.-based Virtua Health, Senior Vice President of Revenue Cycle and Managed Care Tom Buckley told Becker’s their CFO Robert Segin plays a critical role in connecting daily financial decisions to the system’s broader strategy for colleagues. For example, Mr. Segin provided respective leaders across the organization with detailed information regarding Virtua’s various building campaigns to simply draw out where the system’s money is being invested.
“It helps the team because now they understand and connect the dots related to understanding what their cash goal is every month, and more importantly, understanding where that money is going within the organization we’re trying to build and grow,” he said.
Mr. Buckley said this particular leadership tool proved useful when the system converted to Epic a few years back. Virtua also holds monthly meetings to further break down collective goals and objectives.
“We’ll talk about our cash collections, our days and accounts receivable on the patient access side, and we’ll tie patient satisfaction goals back to the registration team to have them understand how important the customer service side is,” he said.
The new CFO mandate is becoming increasingly clear: leaders must home in on collaboration, guide their teams with a clear vision and integrate financial expertise into enterprise decision-making.
“I think that willingness to collaborate, look beyond your own stereotypical area of expertise, and come together to say, ‘what is in the best interest of our organization, and more importantly, the best interest of the people we serve,’ that ability is more important than it ever has been,” Mr. Ashdown said.
