The Senate Finance Committee voted Sept. 24 to send two of President Donald Trump’s HHS nominees to the full Senate for confirmation: Chris Klomp for HHS deputy secretary and Ge Bai, PhD, for an HHS assistant secretary post. The same…

Health system CEOs have no shortage of priorities heading into 2027. Medicaid funding reductions, affordability pressures, workforce needs, changing patient needs and new approaches to care delivery are all shaping their agendas. Across those priorities, leaders are balancing the fundamentals…

For Robert Garrett, the defining moment of his nearly 18 years as a health system CEO was the 2016 merger that brought together Hackensack University Health Network and Meridian Health, a decision he still views as the right one in…

Health system CEOs strive for sustained growth. Marlon Levy, MD, a career transplant surgeon who stepped into the CEO role at Richmond, Va.-based VCU Health four years ago, has been able to achieve it. But that doesn’t mean the health…

If one word defined how hospital and health system CEOs talked about their organizations in 2026, it was efficiency. The term showed up in year-ahead priority lists, turnaround strategies, restructuring announcements and layoff notices alike — a sign of just…

Like many rural community hospitals, St. Mary’s Healthcare faced challenges to its sustainability, including financial pressures, workforce shortages, and regulatory demands. While consolidation or significant cuts can seem like the only options to struggling hospitals, St. Mary’s chose a different…

Leadership succession is ultimately about protecting an organization’s mission rather than any individual’s tenure, Rick Pollack, retiring president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, wrote in his final weekly column. Mr. Pollack, who announced his planned retirement in December…

Healthcare access is increasingly treated as an engineering problem. Health systems across the country are building centralized referral hubs, deploying navigator workflows and redesigning the path from primary to specialty care. The bottleneck isn’t a shortage of desire to treat…

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions convened Sept. 16 to consider three of President Donald Trump’s nominees for top HHS posts: Nicole Saphier, MD, for surgeon general, Chris Klomp for HHS deputy secretary, and Timothy Westlake, MD,…

Just one of the chief human resources officers of the 10 largest health systems in the U.S. stepped into their role within the past year, while four have longer-than-average tenures. The average CHRO tenure was 5.2 years in 2025, according…