Matthew Painter, PhD, serves as Director of Leadership Development for the University of Alabama - Birmingham Health System.
On April 7th, Dr. Painter will give a presentation on "Starting a Leadership Development Program from Scratch: Triumphs and Tribulations" at Becker's Hospital Review 11th 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 on April 6-9, 2020 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Painter's session, click here.
Question: What, from your perspective, is the biggest challenge about the future of work for hospitals, and what can they do about it? (i.e. automation, desire for more flexibility, clinician shortages, etc.)
Matthew Painter: The biggest challenge for the future of healthcare is a lack of leadership skills. Our ability to be successful resides in our willingness to hire and invest in leadership skill development because success always resides on leadership. This is from the Board of Directors all the way down to the way we recruit and hire. The skills that got us here are not the ones that we need to thrive in our new landscape –whatever it becomes. We have to have leaders that not only own their role as a leader, they know how to lead AND manage. In other words, they have to show up every day as a leader and also possess the wisdom to know when and how to lead others and manage tasks. The right leaders with the right skills in the right places can successfully tackle any challenge. Investing in the discipline of Organization Development will increasingly become a key determinant of organizational success.
Q: How can hospitals reconcile the need to maintain inpatient volumes with the mission to keep people healthier and out of the hospital?
MP: We tend to think that the need to maintain inpatient volumes competes with the mission to keep people healthier and out of the hospital. Yet, these are two sides to the same coin. We can do both. Healthcare is so regulated that we often feel our hands are tied. The truth is there’s a lot of opportunities to invest in new models. We should not wait on regulatory bodies to manage this for us, rather we can be proactive. This requires a willingness to be creative, to think win-win, and explore opportunities.
Q: What do you see as the most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now?
MP: The most exciting opportunity in healthcare right now is cultural innovation. The healthcare industry is ripe for ‘cultural disruption’ – intentionality around creating a culture that fosters the key attributes we need for success –and not allowing years of regulation and tradition to manage us. Instead, we can and should be fostering a culture that is conducive to success – a culture of leadership. If we don’t manager our culture, it will certainly manage us. Few companies have mastered this because it takes a lot of humility to admit we aren’t’ doing it right and because it take a great deal of initial intentionality upfront. Therefore, it is necessary to have Executives at the helm who recognize and support our culture as our competitive advantage. Once we’ve identified the right cultural values and aims, we must then adopt a top down commitment to this culture and begin the synchronization of other systems (talent, IT, communication, etc.) to support this new culture.