Becker's 10th Annual Meeting Speaker Series: 3 Questions with Dr. Rod Hochman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Providence St. Joseph Health

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Rod Hochman, MD, serves as president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health.

On April 2nd, Dr. Hochman will speak at Becker's Hospital Review 10th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place April 1-4, 2019 in Chicago.

To learn more about the conference and Dr. Hochman's session, click here.

Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?

Rod Hochman: Providence St. Joseph Health partners with many leading U.S. innovators and we consistently surprise them with our openness for disruptive strategies that promise to improve patient care. We look to embrace new, patient-centric endeavors with traditional and non-traditional partners who will help us find effective solutions. For example, when seven major health care systems, including ours, banded together to form Civica Rx, a not-for-profit generic drug company to address rising drug prices and shortages, we signaled that the times were ripe for change. These type of collaborations interest us and ultimately improve American healthcare.

Q: What one strategic initiative will demand the most of your time and energy in 2019?

RH: Improving quality and reducing costs are always strategic priorities, especially as essential programs such as Medicaid are at risk. This year we are also turning our attention to the upstream, social factors that affect health. We recognize that succeeding with population health and other initiatives that improve lives requires us to seek out effective community partnerships that deal with large-scale societal issues impacting health, such as mental illness, housing, transportation and education. These may not be the traditional domains of health systems, but addressing these concerns is the new imperative.

Q: Can you share some praise with us about people you work with? What does greatness look like to you when it comes to your team?

RH: I work with a great team. I’m surrounded by some of the best minds in health care today. But what makes them great isn’t their education or career success. It’s that they’re good people who operate from a deep place of humility, compassion and forgiveness, which are so lacking in the business world and in American culture today. We have an audacious vision of health for a better world, and it starts with how we serve and treat one another, especially those who have less than others. That’s what greatness looks like to me.

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