As hospitals and health systems create new C-suite roles, others are being phased out due to consolidation and shifting organizational priorities.
The expansion and contraction of executive roles tends to be cyclical, according to Peggy Loughery, MSN, RN, senior vice president of executive search at Kirby Bates Associates. In challenging economic times — such as the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic — some health systems eliminated roles and later reinstated them, Ms. Loughery told Becker’s.
Other roles were permanently eliminated or merged in efforts to streamline strategy and improve efficiency.
“Across healthcare systems, we are seeing notable changes happening in both the roles and the structures of the C-suite,” Scott Sette, healthcare senior client partner at Korn Ferry, told Becker’s. “Overall, these changes reflect the need for organizations to adapt to evolving challenges and to better position themselves to leverage opportunities.”
Here are seven C-suite roles becoming less common at health systems than they were five to 10 years ago.
1. Chief learning officer.
Several health systems that previously had chief learning officers have removed or restructured the role.
“The trend has been to include learning within the chief people officer scope, in part as workforce engagement and planning imperatives have pulled CPOs more into this space,” Paul Bohne, managing partner at WittKieffer, told Becker’s. “In addition, financial pressures have created a trend toward outsourcing and consulting relationships to augment organizations’ learning functions and goals.”
2. Chief experience officer.
Some systems are folding patient and customer experience responsibilities into clinical, operations or marketing roles, Mr. Sette said.
“Many health systems have re-distributed these responsibilities, having had mixed success from the scope and model of the CXO roles and rethinking their overall approaches to advancing the patient experience,” Mr. Bohne said.
3. COO.
The COO role is being eliminated or combined with other leadership positions at some organizations, Ms. Loughery said. In many cases, it is merged with the chief nursing officer role.
4. Chief administrative officer.
Like the COO, some health systems are breaking up the CAO’s responsibilities across multiple executives.
“Particularly in cases when a COO or CAO retires, some organizations are choosing to not refill those roles, but instead elect to split up those responsibilities and delegate them to several other C-suite leaders to reduce costs and to further develop the operational skill sets of those executives,” Mr. Sette said.
5. Hospital-specific CEO
As many health systems grow larger, some are removing hospital CEO roles in favor of regional leadership models, Ms. Loughery said. These models typically include a regional CEO, CNO and chief medical officer overseeing several hospitals.
6. Chief diversity officer
The chief diversity officer role has become less common in recent years, largely due to financial constraints following the pandemic and in anticipation of Medicaid cuts, Ms. Loughery said.
“Where organizations are able to reduce senior level positions that maybe they feel are more nice to have versus operationally important — I would disagree; I think the chief diversity officer is a must-have so that you have diversity of thought in an organization — but they are roles that we are definitely seeing less common,” she said.
Mr. Sette added that in many organizations, diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives have been folded into broader and more strategic initiatives that address health equity, human capital and community engagement.
7. Chief strategy officer.
Some systems are also redistributing strategic planning functions to other executives, such as the COO or CFO, as part of operational or financial planning, Mr. Sette said.
