Health systems face no shortage of strategy. What many are running low on is the capacity to execute it.
That observation sits at the center of a conversation that Mandy Eaton, PhD, president and CEO of Springfield, Ill.-based Memorial Health, believes most health system leaders are not having openly enough.
“Most health system leaders understand the industry’s challenges,” Dr. Eaton said on the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “We understand reimbursement pressures, workforce shortages and rising costs, technology investments and constraints, and increasing consumer expectations. But what’s less discussed is that health systems are trying to solve all those challenges simultaneously, while continuing to care for patients every day.”
The systems that pull ahead over the next decade, she said, will not be defined by the strength of their plans alone.
“The organizations that succeed over the next decade won’t necessarily be the ones with the best strategy,” Dr. Eaton said. “They’ll be the ones that can consistently execute. They’ll know how to prioritize. They’ll know how to align resources. They’ll know how to manage change. They’ll be masters at managing change, and they’ll help people adopt new ways of working. For me, that’s probably one of the biggest lessons of leadership. Vision is so essential, strategy is so important, but execution is really what turns vision into results.”
For William “Bill” Robertson, CEO of Tacoma, Wash.-based MultiCare Health System, execution capacity is cultural before it is operational.
“Foundational to this success is a culture that embraces three big ideas,” he told Becker’s. “Trust accelerates decision-making and execution, both-and thinking supports doing more than one thing at a time, and a hybrid operating model — neither a holding company nor an operating company — allows us to more fully capture both local market knowledge and execution while realizing economies of scale and expertise.”
He said these principles came from years of experience and were built into MultiCare from the beginning of his tenure.
“The result is that over the past 12 years, MultiCare has grown from being an important but small geography platform into the largest community-based health system in the Pacific Northwest,” Mr. Robertson said.
Where Mr. Robertson anchored execution in culture, Paul Hiltz, CEO of Naples (Fla.) Comprehensive Health, found the answer in a structural fix. NCH built a monthly operating review, a standing forum that brings together the leaders who own service line work to examine performance, identify barriers and make decisions together in one room.
“We realized the old way wasn’t working because we could have good information and good people working hard, but not always have the right people together at the right time to connect the dots and act,” Mr. Hiltz told Becker’s. “The Monthly Operating Review changed that. It has created a consistent forum for transparency, accountability and rapid problem-solving. The expectation is not simply to report on what happened, but to understand why, determine what needs to change and leave the room with clear ownership and action.”
The shift, he said, moved NCH from discussing performance to actively managing it.
Tina Gillespie, CEO of Harrison County Community Hospital in Bethany, Mo., built toward the same outcome through a different lens. She designed what she calls an organizational operating rhythm that connects strategy, governance and front-line execution, she told Becker’s.
“Through structured leadership meetings, transparent communication and a focus on removing barriers rather than assigning blame, we’ve been able to make decisions faster, stay aligned, and successfully execute complex initiatives such as opening a new hospital facility,” Ms. Gillespie said.
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