Becker's Hospital Review Annual Meeting offered its usual strong lineup of strategic topics delivered by a diverse set of leaders generating an array of actionable insights. B.E. Smith was in attendance and synthesized five themes of particular note for healthcare executives.
Vision and Strategy are the top required leadership attributes.
Two-thirds of surveyed executives express optimism about the future, citing confidence in healthcare's historical resilience in the face of change.
Several sessions explored physician leadership through various helpful lenses. Administrator-physician dyads were the subject of "A Culture Change of Integration and Physician Leadership" by Matt Gibb, Chief Medical Officer, John Snyder, Chief Operating Officer, and Caleb Miller, Vice President at Carle Clinic. The pairs must have a balance of skills and an ability to function cohesively. In Carle Clinic's case, dyads combine an Administrative Vice President with a Medical Director in each of 14 service lines. The dyadic goals are clear: develop high-performing teams, establish effective doctor-administrator communication, and tackle complex departmental problems.
An interesting take on a growing need in physician leadership development was offered by Jonathan Gleason, Vice President of Clinical Advancement, and Patrice Weiss, Chief Medical Officer at Carilion Clinic. The two described their organization's multi-level program to groom physicians for significant involvement in risk management. A Chief Leadership Academy and annual "risk curriculum" were designed for doctors to increase their "risk literacy" since they are assigned to reviewing claims and supporting peers in risk efforts. Carilion has seen a reduction in claims and expenditures and believes the physician development has helped prevent claims recurrence and promote readiness to defend claims when they occur.
Trevor Wright, Chief Operating Officer, Beth Elwell, Executive Director, and Sara Matus, Director of Operational Excellence at Loma Linda University Health used "Driving Operational Excellence" to showcase their approach to creating a formal department, hiring performance improvement staff, and investing in analytics technology – all in service of decreasing variability and optimizing best practices across five targeted clinical and operational initiatives. The program exceeded its financial savings goal of $40 million. The audience was given several takeaways, including not allowing one individual to veto an idea, ensuring that data benchmarks are validated, and finding improvement staff who fit well culturally to implement change.
Finally, in "Using Predictive Analytics to Increase Your Hospital's Profitability," Jeff Peters, Chief Executive Officer and consultant Michael Besedick, both of Surgical Directions, walked the audience through a specific effort to build effective predictive models for block scheduling of perioperative services. Data-driven decisions prompted meaningful improvements in surgical volume, OR utilization, and quality outcomes.
A wealth of insights flowed from the senior executives at the Becker's Hospital Review Annual Conference in the areas of industry trends, transformational change, patient experience, physician leadership and analytics. Participants came away with many strategies to pursue and many reasons to be optimistic about success.