Since 2017, Ms. Kaiser has led the St. Louis-based Catholic, nonprofit integrated health system with approximately 40,000 employees as SSM Health has worked to improve its analytical capabilities and cultivate change management skills among leaders. Also high on her list: advancing partnerships and defining — and embracing — value-based care while staying connected to SSM Health’s roots.
Editor’s note: Responses are lightly edited for length and clarity.
Question: SSM Health has consistently prioritized strategic growth and transformation. As you look ahead, what is one strategic priority that you see as most critical for driving success in the next year?
Laura Kaiser: We’re very focused on four priorities. First is telling our story far and wide, because SSM Health does remarkable work in the communities we serve. We want to be sure that people are aware of that, as well as the esprit de corps that it engenders internally, because everyone’s here for all the right reasons, wanting to really serve the community.
The second is improving our analytical capabilities. Healthcare is still pretty analog compared to many other industries that have gone more digital, and that includes the use of artificial intelligence. So, we’re focused on advancing our capabilities during this fiscal year and beyond.
The third is that we need to ensure that we have a margin to reinvest in our infrastructure — facilities, technology and workforce. In the words of Sister Irene Kraus, a Daughter of Charity, “No margin, no mission.”
And then lastly, attention to our culture, because what we provide — our product — is healthcare, which happens through the hearts and hands of our team. And so we need to be sure that we’ve got a healthy culture in which our caregivers will thrive. There’s a definitive link between employee engagement and customer patient satisfaction, so it’s essential that we have a healthy, thriving culture as our workplace in which we serve the community.
Q: As SSM Health continues to expand its value-based care initiatives, what are some of the biggest misconceptions about scaling value-based models in a large, integrated health system?
LK: There’s a lot of confusion about what we mean when we talk about value-based care. What is value-based care? When you ask one person, you get one definition. Ask someone else, you get a different definition. The way that I think about value-based care is, how do we help people live their healthiest lives? To me, it’s about aligning the individual patient’s needs with the payment structure.
Our national health system is still misaligned financially. If you need critical care, there’s nowhere any of us should rather be than in the United States. But we have a way to go, relative to population health and helping people stay well in the first place, from prevention all the way to the end of life. So I think one of the starting places is to identify and have a common definition of what we mean when we talk about value-based care.
Q: SSM Health has been pursuing partnerships to enhance care delivery. What has surprised you the most about leading these collaborations, and can you share an example of a partnership that exceeded your expectations?
LK: I joined SSM Health in 2017, and my predecessor was really focused on growth, which I agreed with, and still do. I added partnerships, because my view is that there isn’t a single organization that has everything it needs to do its best for serving individuals and communities. Partnerships ensure that we’re able to bring together the best thinking and resources to solve complex issues facing our communities and the industry. So, we’ve been adding a number of key partnerships to that equation.
A good example is Civica Rx, a company founded in 2018 to address shortages and prices of generic drugs. In its incubation, I was still at Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Health, one of the founding members of Civica Rx, when Intermountain’s current chief strategy officer, Dan Liljenquist, shared his concern about issues with the generic drug supply. The result is Civica Rx, and SSM Health is also a founding member.
It’s the power of putting together interested parties to bring our best thinking, capital — because you typically need capital for getting ideas stood up and then to scale — so wicked problems can be tackled. There are lots of wicked problems inside healthcare. There’s also a tremendous amount of great intention, but problems take a lot of concerted effort to solve. Civica Rx is a great example of successfully improving the stability of the generic medication supply to hospitals so we can, in turn, take care of patients without worrying about whether there is enough saline or some other fundamental resource.
Q: SSM Health has focused heavily on leadership development and succession planning. Can you provide an example of a leadership initiative that has proven especially effective and how it has impacted the organization?
LK: I have two examples. The first one is around change management. Change management is always something that a leader can build and improve upon. I always talk about how everybody loves change as long as it’s their idea. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of change that isn’t any of our ideas, and we all need to individually adapt and, as leaders, help others go through the change curve.
At SSM Health, we introduced a yearlong change management training for all of our leadership — vice president and above. Our expert organizational development team formalized a program which included individual study, small groups and leadership meetings. It was an organization-wide investment already proving to be helpful. This year, we are building on that by having leaders read the book “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen M.R. Covey, which is an oldie but goodie, to add to our change management skills. Trust is everything. If there’s trust, you can move much faster, and we need to move with agility in this current climate, more than ever.
The second example is more focused on formation. As a Catholic health system founded by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary more than 152 years ago, our leadership responsibility is to carry forward their legacy through delivery of our mission, vision and values today. We have a two-year executive leadership formation program to help ensure everyone is steeped in where we’ve come from and what is our rich history and heritage. Our Founder Mother Odilia Berger spoke of continuing courageously for the love of God. All of us will be better leaders with that touchstone and connection to purpose with some very specific teachings. We’re not trying to convert anyone — you don’t have to be Catholic to work here — but you do need to have alignment with our mission, vision and values.
