Emily Moorhead, president of the Macomb market at Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, starts each week with a report she doesn’t delegate. It logs incidents of violence and aggression against her staff — physicians, nurses and everyone coming into her facilities — and she uses it to reach out directly to affected team members.
The reports aren’t a compliance exercise. They are a practice of accountability and inseparable from how she thinks about growth.
“My first responsibility is to those that have dedicated their lives to caring for others,” Ms. Moorhead said during a recent “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” interview. “I don’t take care of patients on a daily basis, so I have to take care of my staff and our partners who are coming into our facilities each and every day and to create an environment where they’re safe, they’re supported, and they’re equipped to do their very best work.”
Ms. Moorhead is one year into building operational and financial stability at Henry Ford Macomb, having strengthened quality metrics, deepened physician partnerships and improved financial performance since taking the role. The headwinds she’s navigating — financial pressure, workforce demand, rapidly advancing technology — are common across health system leadership. But the one she tracks weekly is the one that weighs most heavily.
That discipline shapes her view of what sustainable growth actually requires. Organizations that ask more of their people without investing in their safety and culture are building on unstable ground, she argued. Much of her first year was spent creating what she calls a culture of psychological safety with the conditions under which leaders and frontline staff feel comfortable raising problems rather than suppressing them.
“I really do feel like if we care for our caregivers, they will deliver extraordinary care to our patients and community,” she said.
In practice, that has meant structured leadership exercises using anonymous written input to give voice to those less comfortable speaking in group settings, and weaving different tiers of leadership into committee structures. The intent is a feedback loop that reaches all the way to the frontline.
“When you’re investing in your leaders and empowering them, you’re also getting the halo effect of a more engaged frontline staff as well,” Ms. Moorhead said.
The caregiver commitment is not just a program running alongside the growth strategy but the foundation on which growth is built. Longer term, Ms. Moorhead said that commitment extends to developing the next generation of leaders equipped to challenge the status quo and shape what healthcare is becoming.
“I’m looking at my responsibility, not just around leading the hospital and making sure that we’re financially and operationally stable for the future, but also making sure that we’re developing the leaders and flexing the muscles of the leadership for tomorrow that’s going to shape the health care of tomorrow,” she said.
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