To stay successful as a health system in three to five years from now, Randy Oostra, president and CEO of Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica, said one of the biggest concerns is trying to balance expenses and revenues.
“It’s a matter of if you have the right resources and right opportunities to work across the geography and get some efficiencies,” Mr. Oostra said. “We’re in partnership discussions with a lot of systems of ways we can be more effective together and purchase together maybe across a couple states….Why don’t we work together to make one system? Whether those discussions are going to result in anything, we don’t know. But that’s the next level for us.”
In terms of the smartest thing hospitals are doing, Lynn Massingale, MD, executive chairman of TeamHealth, discussed executive relationships with clinicians.
“The thing I see the most now that seems to be the best thing is hospital leaders who are figuring out some way to engage the physicians in some planning for the future,” Dr. Massingale said. “The smartest hospital leaders that we see are the ones that say to their medical staff, ‘We’re not sure we have this figured out, but we can’t have our heads in the sand.'”
Similarly, Barbara Martin, CEO of Waukegan, Ill.-based Vista Health System, said it is important to delegate responsibilities and let senior leaders do their jobs. ” I’m a very engaged CEO 24/7, but I have to depend on entire strong leaders reporting to me to really do their jobs and do it well,” Ms. Martin said. “That’s the critical factor. You [as CEO] back off to strategy business development and those components instead of trying to run them day-to-day. You have to move and set strategy.”
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