Rick Shumway, MHA, serves as President and Chief Executive Officer at Stanford Health Care – ValleyCare.
Rick will be serving on the panel "Hospital C-suite Exits: How to Fortify Your Talent Pipeline" 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 Rick's session, click here.
Question: What are your top priorities for 2022?
Rick Shumway: Believe it or not, the focus of 2022 for me is fairly straightforward – the past 2+ years have had a tremendous impact on our industry, and I believe that this is the year that will define how we have either made significant progress, or have missed an opportunity to become better because of what we’ve learned. As such, this year I’m really focused on three primary things:
i. Addressing the impact of the past 2 years on our teams. I don’t recall a time during my career that our amazing healthcare team members have been under such duress. It will be our responsibility to continue to do the things that we know how to do to lift them up as they’ve gone through such a tumultuous time, but also to look for new ways that will address their needs that have evolved and changed over time. This is one of our primary responsibilities as healthcare leaders, and this is the time to double down.
ii. Hardwiring lessons learned from COVID-19: while it has been a challenging 2 years, there have been so many learnings along the way that we’ve all hoped would stay “after the pandemic.” While some of these have become part of who we are, there are other examples of how we have slipped back into old habits as we’ve moved ahead. We will need to be deliberate in disciplining ourselves to continue to take the good things that we’ve learned about ourselves and how we should operate in the future, and hardwire that into our future behaviors.
iii. Ensuring that the organization is able to maintain and increase momentum on moving our long-term strategies forward: It is important to keep our eye on the ball – COVID malaise is a real thing, and while we want to continue to be vigilant and ready to respond to any changes that it may bring in the future, we don’t want to lose sight of what we know will be important to achieve going forward. We need to increase value-based care, increase access to care, improve health equity, support our workforce, and plan for the needs of our communities proactively. Lots to do, and we need to maintain focus despite the fact that we’re hopefully edging off of the COVID precipice.
Q: How do you plan to pivot strategies this year to better serve patients?
RS: I believe that accessibility and innovation will be the key. In many ways, patients are directly shaping the way that they want to interact with “healthcare” in the future – and sometimes, that means that it needs to be different than what they’ve experienced before, as well as being different than what we’re used to as providers. Patients want us to be more nimble, accessible, faster, transparent, and higher quality. That means that we’ll need to continue our focus on improving the digital experience that our patients have, as well increasing the value and efficiency that they experience when they are interacting with us in the healthcare setting. We need to make it easier for them to engage with us across the board, so much of our efforts this year will be focusing on these areas.
Q: What advice do you have for emerging healthcare leaders today?
RS: Healthcare, in my opinion, is one of the most complex industries that exists. The pressures come from every side, the issues that we need to overcome are significant, and the stakes are incredibly high – it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. What I’m impressed by is that the emerging leaders that we see coming through the ranks are well-equipped to be successful in this environment. They will need to maintain their desire to ask the question why, and think about ways to do things that are better than the way that things have always been done. While driving toward a better digital experience in the healthcare arena, they’ll also need to balance this out by keeping a sharp eye on how they support the people that do this work every day. That’s not always easy, but without the teams that are here day in and day out, nothing happens. Our leaders in the future will need to find creative ways to support our many team members in ways that we haven’t seen before. In short, innovation, patience, human-centeredness, and a drive to perform and improve will be paramount characteristics of those that will lead healthcare into its next iteration.