To gain insight into these priorities, Becker’s asked executives to share the one word that best embodies their strategic focus, along with the challenges or opportunities driving that choice and how it will influence key decisions and initiatives.
Their responses highlight various approaches, from meeting community needs to empowering employees.
Editor’s note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Maulik Joshi, DrPH. President and CEO of Meritus Health (Hagerstown, Md.)
What is the one word that best embodies your organization’s strategic vision and culture for 2025?
“Bold” is the one word that best embodies our organization’s strategic vision and culture.
What challenges or opportunities inspired this focus, and how will it guide key decisions or initiatives?
We built a 2030 Bold Goals Strategic Plan for Meritus back in 2020 when the pandemic started. We started with four Bold Goals to achieve by the year 2030: zero patient harm, be a nationally ranked employer of choice, be the most efficient health system in our state, and lose 1 million pounds as a community. Along the way we added two more Bold Goals to achieve by the year 2030: have a world-class medical school and achieve zero suicides in our community.
We know when you set incremental goals, you think incremental improvement. But when you set Bold goals, you think of big improvement and change, which requires flawless execution. We need bold goals — we owe it to the people we serve. Healthcare and health status are not where any of us want it to be, so we need to strive to achieve bold goals or outcomes. For example, we have recorded over 160,000 pounds lost from almost 8,000 registered users and 50 employers in our county. That is tremendous, but we want to go bold and strive to reach a bigger goal.
The other benefit of setting Bold Goals is that it requires execution to be strong and continuously get better. Bold goals and flawless execution together are the secret ingredients to success.
Brad Meyer. CEO of Bluestem Health (Lincoln, Neb.)
What is the one word that best embodies your organization’s strategic vision and culture for 2025?
“Community” — The community embodies our dedication to promoting inclusive, patient-centered holistic care, enhancing partnerships and addressing the diverse health needs of the population we serve. It also captures our focus on collaboration, accessibility and comprehensive health outcomes.
What challenges or opportunities inspired this focus, and how will it guide key decisions or initiatives?
Our local public schools are pretty diverse, with over 130 languages and dialects spoken, which shows just how mixed our community is. On top of that, about 20% to 25% of our patients speak a language other than English at home. This mix, along with the different cultural, social and economic backgrounds of our patients and staff, makes it pretty tough to come up with solutions that work for everyone. We need to tackle these complexities if we want to provide fair and inclusive care.
Also, we’re dealing with some rapid changes in our funding sources, like the 340B Drug Pricing Program, ACO contracts and Medicare Advantage plans, which adds a bit of uncertainty and means we have to stay quick on our feet to meet the evolving needs of our community. Plus, we’re getting hit with a ton of unsolicited proposals from vendors who claim they can boost revenue, streamline data and make everything more efficient. While some pilot programs haven’t really delivered as promised, leading to a bit of skepticism about future vendor deals, it’s super important not to let those past experiences scare us away from potentially good opportunities.
We have a great chance to build stronger connections with other organizations and systems around us. Sharing what works and what doesn’t with trusted peers can really help us grow and improve. Even though competition often makes us keep our cards close to our chest, working together can really propel us forward. Decision-makers are way more likely to trust insights from organizations that have a solid track record rather than random pitches from vendors.
Getting community input is also key to making sure we’re accountable and that people feel like they have ownership. Given how much our communities have changed in the last decade, it’s crucial to update our community assessments. By figuring out what primary care providers actually need and aligning our recruitment and adaptation strategies accordingly, we can become a more responsive employer and healthcare provider. This not only boosts our standing in the community but also helps us meet the expectations of both patients and staff.
Our needs assessment process is all about engaging with folks from different sectors, including cultural centers, schools, public health organizations, and other nonprofits. By bringing in these perspectives, we get a clearer picture of the pressing issues facing our community. This inclusive approach helps align our strategic plans with what the community really needs. Plus, we’ve switched from long, five-year plans to shorter one- and three-year ones so we can stay flexible and adapt to changes more easily.
When it comes to recruiting and resource allocation, we’re focusing on investments that really benefit our teams and underserved populations. Creating job descriptions that highlight entry-level opportunities is key to attracting people interested in healthcare careers while also supporting our certified and licensed team members. This strategy not only helps with staffing shortages but also builds a more inclusive workforce that reflects our community’s diversity. A well-staffed and diverse team reduces stress, boosts patient satisfaction and creates a better work atmosphere for everyone.
To see if these initiatives are actually working, we’re setting up some clear metrics, like improving patient satisfaction scores, increasing our bilingual staff and reducing staff turnover.
Amy Perry. President and CEO of Banner Health (Phoenix)
What is the one word that best embodies your organization’s strategic vision and culture for 2025?
Our employees chose our word of the year, and fascinatingly — and this is polling all of our physicians and employees — the majority chose the word “together.” And that is so perfectly reflective of what we’re trying to achieve with our “One Team” culture.
The very innovative, transformative part of Banner is that we are a payer and provider. So, we offer care — expansive care. We serve 3.5 million unique lives a year. But the breadth and depth of how Banner touches its community with its care requires this “together,” this “One Team” approach.
The other most important innovative piece of Banner is that we also are a health plan, and we provide all segments of insurance, from Medicare Advantage to Medicaid to commercial to individual plans. And because we’re able to provide that coverage — right now to 1.2 million members — we are able to collect premium revenue that gives us the ability to invest in wellness.
We have these unique opportunities that, together with our communities — not just together as Banner individually, but Banner with our partners and our neighbors — we are able to have a true impact on access and affordability in the communities we serve. And that is the way we are going to transform for the future.
What challenges or opportunities inspired this focus, and how will it guide key decisions or initiatives?
We know as a country — not just in our field — that we have to deliver healthcare in a more efficient and effective way. Because of that, we need to lean into team care and have everybody play their most essential role in delivering that.
We’ll obviously all be better if we keep people well, so they don’t end up needing massive amounts of teams to take care of them, and so we can deal with most of people’s issues in a better, more preventive way.
And it’s all the investments all of us are making in technology. We know that we have to make an impact on creating this efficiency with less reliance on a dwindling workforce. And Banner, being the unique place that it is, is training an enormous number of clinical professionals. We have 5,000 nursing students rotating at Banner. We have more than 1,300 residents and fellows training at Banner.
We are working as fast as we can to help fill an incredibly needed clinical pipeline. So, when we look at these challenges ahead of us — reductions in workforce, reductions in clinical professionals — we are addressing this issue in multiple ways, from the creation of the replacement workforce to reducing the need for burdensome tasks through our technology investment and, ultimately, by bringing new structures and people into the care model so we can do more with a different number of team members at the patient’s side.
