Atlanta-based Grady Health System shared in mid-March that its president and CEO John Haupert will retire at the end of 2026, after 35 years in healthcare and 15 with Grady.
Prior to joining Grady, Mr. Haupert served as COO of Dallas-based Parkland Health. He also served as executive vice president of corporate services for Dallas-based Methodist Health System.
Anthony Saul, Grady’s COO, will succeed him. Mr. Saul became president and COO, effective immediately, following the announcement, and will transition to president and CEO Jan. 1, 2027. For his part, Mr. Saul has been in healthcare for more than 25 years. He also served as Grady’s executive vice president and CFO, and senior vice president of the system.
Grady is not Mr. Saul’s first healthcare role in Georgia. Prior to financial leadership roles at LCMC Health and Ochsner Health System, both in New Orleans, Mr. Saul served as administrator of operations and finance at Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, Ga.
The leadership transition comes amid the system’s $1 billion investment in a new medical campus, which includes a $900 million hospital, a $38 million freestanding emergency department, and a $75 million medical office building. Grady’s investments to expand care come on the heels of the 2022 closures of Marietta, Ga.-based Wellstar’s Atlanta Medical Center South and Atlanta Medical Center.
Becker’s connected with Mr. Haupert and Mr. Saul to discuss the outgoing CEO’s proudest accomplishments, the leadership lessons he’s passing on and how Mr. Saul plans to carry Grady’s mission forward, from tackling the financial headwinds of federal Medicaid cuts to expanding care into underserved communities.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: Your retirement comes at an exciting shift for the system: a $1 billion campus is underway, a successor has been named and there is real momentum behind the mission. Looking back at your tenure, what are you most proud of, and what has surprised you most about the journey of leading Grady?
John Haupert: I would say, one of the things I’m very proud of is quickly being able to assess what the issues were and addressing them. No. 1, the revenue cycle was not being managed well, [we had] major issues there. While the total revamp of the revenue cycle took a few years, just in the first year alone, we increased net revenue by $135 million.
Another win [No. 2] was developing a highly effective executive team to work with. No. 3 was totally reshaping the culture of the organization, which is not an easy thing to do. Instilling service excellence for patients and being a good team member as an employee, both of those were in pretty bad shape. It took a while, and while culture is never 100%, it has made a [significant improvement].
Q: You’ve watched Grady from the inside for over seven years, first as CFO, then as COO. Now that you’re stepping into the CEO seat, what feels different about the responsibility? What part of John’s leadership style are you most intentional about carrying forward versus evolving?
Anthony Saul: It’s great to see greatness at work … John’s ability to manage the storm, manage the waves and all that comes our way. One of the things I’ve been absolutely impressed with, not only by John’s leadership, but by Grady, is how it handles the unknown. Grady handles the uncertain better than any institution I’ve seen. The way John has led with people first, people always and patient centered, it’s a core foundation for how I anticipate taking the baton and taking Grady to its next chapter of greatness. All of our successes are because of the teams. Investing in our teams, continuing to support our teams and listening so we can remove barriers for our teams to exhibit the greatness that their talents bring every day are some of my top priorities.
From the perspective of the CFO hat, as I look out on the landscape, federal cuts are real. They are coming. From the national lens, healthcare has to be less costly. Another one of our priorities is looking at operational efficiencies and improvement. We have to find ways to eliminate some of the excessive steps we do to perform what we do, and reduce our waste footprint. We’ve had a keen focus with our operation improvement and business transformation teams over the last few years that’s been studying not only our business practices, but they’ve been studying our operators and our doctors. We’re putting in place lean practices and training to help reduce the number of steps and variations in our care, in our delivery of service and in what our patients encounter when they enter our system. That’s from the first call up until they get their bill. As we look at what Grady has to do to continue thriving in the future, raising the bar is what comes to mind.
Q: The CEO role requires constantly balancing mission with financial reality. What leadership lesson did you learn the hard way that you’d want Anthony to carry into 2027 and beyond?
JH: Looking back in my career and looking at essential leadership competencies that a CEO must have, one that I had to really work on … was perfecting the ability to have crucial conversations, and having them in a timely manner. I think that’s a leadership characteristic that a lot of people may struggle with. By not doing it well and not being timely, it really can damage an organization and a high-performing team. One thing that [Mr. Saul] and I are both very good at … is high levels of emotional intelligence. I think emotional intelligence is probably one of the top two or three leadership competencies a CEO must have. Read, engage, listen, process and don’t react. It sets a tone at the top and a tone of open communication, accessibility and puts people at ease.
Q: As the hospital campus project advances, how will you build on this momentum while still serving the communities Grady has always been anchored to?
AS: Grady’s commitment to excellence in service to our community by improving access to care, bringing care closer to home and creating healthier communities is unwavering. With the focus on community health at each step along the way, our planning team, under our strategy officer, has done an exceptional job of assessing the market and creating the building blocks that will lead to not only a successful launch, but an absolute improvement in the care in the community that we’re going into.
This part of South Fulton County (Ga.) is an absolute healthcare desert. We’ve been very methodical about how we have built the plan, but also flexible. For the last two years, we’ve been having community engagement, community health fairs and community listening to ensure that the community’s voice is reflected in what we build.
Grady has thrived by staying in tune and in touch with the community. Whether it’s our award-winning HIV center, which has been very responsive in Atlanta, which is one of the leading places of new AIDS cases, an epicenter if you will, to our Food Is Medicine program, which has delivered prescriptive foods to many of our patients who are struggling with various [social determinants of health], including food insecurities. The mission in the south is no different. It is to respond to the medical needs of the community by partnering with our medical school partners, our county commission, our local governing officials in the South Fulton area, bringing the business practice and health improvement that we’ve accumulated with the team here to provide the solution for the south. We plan on remaining as flexible and as committed to ensuring the services we bring in the south are not only viable to improving the health of that community, but also to providing a pathway for a stronger Grady with this new campus.
Q: How do you hope the next generation of leadership builds on what you’ve started? What does the Grady of 2036 look like in your mind?
JH: Predicting beyond a couple of years in healthcare is not so easy. The House bill [H.R. 1] that cut funding for Medicaid hit safety net hospitals very hard. One of the things [Mr. Saul ] will assess and do, is taking healthcare into the communities where our patients live. Part of that is establishing neighborhood clinics, which we now have 11 or 12 of. I know that’s something he’s looking into. Also, how do we create a forward thinking ambulatory process that really takes advantage of telehealth, hospital at home and proper use of AI … where it’s determined to be effective and ethical, because that will improve efficiency and cost. [Mr. Saul] will operate the system responsibly from a financial standpoint, which is really “Job 1.” Grady’s got to create the amount of cash needed to maintain itself and grow.
Q: Healthcare leaders must simultaneously consider access, workforce, technology and social determinants. As you take the reins during this big moment in Grady’s history, what excites you most? What keeps you up at night?
AS: What excites me most is to bring care to patients who need it most. With the closures of several hospitals in those markets, in those areas, those communities have been struggling, driving as much as an hour to get to emergency, high level care. It’s the people, it’s the communities that we’re going to be able to impact. It’s tackling the life-expectancy gap in those neighborhoods, some of them with a gap nearly 20 years different than our communities to the north. The impact of what we are able to do for the health of our citizens, of our neighbors and our families in the south, is really what gives me goosebumps about the frontier that Grady is launching into. The mission has always been clear at Grady. We are here to improve the health and the lives of our communities that we’re privileged to serve. To be able to stand in the shoes of giants, such as John and others in past years, to lead such an historically important and focused institution, it’s my life’s greatest honor.
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