Chris Bjornberg is managing a complex merger as CEO of Imperial Valley Healthcare District in Calexico, Calif., where two hospitals serving roughly 187,000 people are in the late stages of consolidation after decades of competition. But that hasn’t distracted from his larger mission to transform healthcare.
He is watching the same disruptions arriving at every health system in the country, only faster than most organizations have prepared for.
During a recent interview on the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast,” Mr. Bjornberg mentioned three forces he believes demand immediate commitment from health system leaders: care model transformation, digital and AI strategy and leadership talent alignment. All three are arriving simultaneously, and waiting for the full picture on any one of them, is itself a strategic risk.
1. Care delivery. Inpatient-centric models, as he frames it, can no longer anchor a sustainable health system strategy. Organizations that delay redesigning how care is delivered, whether through ambulatory expansion, hospital-at-home programs or stronger care coordination, are falling behind.
“The traditional inpatient-centric models are no longer sustainable, in my opinion,” Mr. Bjornberg said. “The organizations that hesitate to redesign that care delivery, whether that’s ambulatory expansion, hospital at home, better care coordination, they’re going to risk falling behind, and that’s not something that anybody can do at this point in time.”
2. Digital and AI strategy. Health systems face mounting pressure to evaluate an expanding roster of tools, vendors and use cases, and the risk, as Mr. Bjornberg sees it, is not choosing the wrong technology. It is failing to commit to anything.
“The key is not doing everything right, but being committed to the right platform and aligning resources behind those quickly,” he said.
3. Leadership transformation. The most underestimated factor in the success of healthcare organizations is having the right leaders in the right roles, and being willing to act when the answer is no. As the pace of change accelerates, organizational execution lives or dies at the leadership level, and waiting to address gaps is itself a decision with real costs.
“When things move as quickly as they are right now, having the wrong leaders in critical roles is one of the biggest risks to execution that we have,” Mr. Bjornberg said. “I think that leaders need to be more decisive in assessing capabilities, making changes that we need, building teams that are going to be comfortable operating in ambiguity.”
‘Discipline clarity’ leadership
Functioning across all three forces is a leadership disposition he calls “discipline clarity.” Leaders who can stay focused on these three factors will succeed, even during uncertain times. Uncertainty is inherent to the current environment and ambiguity, which he sees as a leadership failure, shapes how he communicates with his own teams.
“What I’ve learned is that uncertainty doesn’t slow organizations down as much as ambiguity does,” Mr. Bjornberg said. “When leaders are unclear or they’re inconsistent, then that’s when you start to see people hesitate.”
The ‘discipline clarity’ approach rests on simplifying complexity into clear priorities, communicating those priorities repeatedly even as the path evolves and building feedback loops that allow real-time adjustment without losing momentum.
“When you provide steady direction and explain the ‘why,’ even if the ‘how’ is still being refined or being refined at that point in time, the team still tends to stay engaged and move forward with confidence,” he said. “It’s less about having the perfect answers when those questions come up, but more about maintaining the discipline clarity, so that the organization can continue to execute while adapting in real time.”
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