John Kurvink, CPA, MHA, serves as Vice President, Performance and Financial Strategy, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Innovation Officer at Grey Bruce Health Services.
John will serve on the panel "The Best and Most Cost-Effective Strategies for Cyber Security" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th 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 in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and John's session, click here.
Q: What are your top priorities for 2022?
John Kurvink: The top priority for 2022 will managing recovery out of the pandemic. We need to address the large backlog in surgeries while managing our costs. Health human resources will be a constraining factor on our recovery since finding staff is getting increasingly difficult. We need to be creative to leverage and maximize the skills of our professionally designated staff to allow them to work at their full scope of practice and delegate tasks to others wherever possible.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
JK: The first will be recognition that our system in Canada lacked the capacity to manage the bed pressures brought on by Covid-19 leading to surgery cancellations and public health restrictions being imposed which may cause long term damage to population health yet to be quantified. The second legacy is the value of system thinking and cooperation between health system providers to address the challenges brought by the pandemic. Health corporations worked together to balance surgical and patient loads across geographies where previously they would have competed for volumes all in the interests of protecting the acute care system from collapse.
Q: What advice do you have for emerging healthcare leaders today?
JK: Working through the last two years of the pandemic is hopefully a once in a career experience and one to tell your grandchildren about. Emerging leaders should take the time to appreciate the lessons learned and incorporate them into their leadership practice going forward. As they say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and I believe the last 24 months will forge a generation of emerging leaders who will work to make a health system resilient, nimble and patient centric in the years to come. It will no longer be business as usual, and our emerging leaders need to embrace that reality.