FierceHealthcare reports that ”children’s hospitals are in a ‘war for talent’ as they seek to find leaders with experience in industries that survived periods of rapid change — similar to what is happening in the healthcare industry, according to Jim King, chief quality officer and leader of the Children’s Hospitals practice at Witt/Kieffer, a leading executive-search firm.

Fierce paraphrased him as saying that children’s hospitals need leaders who can help children’s hospitals transition to an individual facility-centric model and a more health-system-oriented mindset. They also need executives who can ably coordinate pediatric care across the continuum. As a result, he said, “children’s hospitals seek leaders that bring more than just healthcare experience to the team.”

Fierce, paraphrasing Mr. King, said that he said that “pediatric hospitals increasingly look outside the healthcare industry for chief human-resources officers and in some cases even chief financial officers.”

“Many hospitals look to executives who previously worked in highly-regulated industries, such as banking, financial services and airlines, that have successfully gone through significant transformations,” Fierce, paraphrasing Mr. King, said.

He also suggested that experience working for a large consulting firm handling many kinds of industries would be useful. In addition, pediatric hospitals  often seek physicians to lead them because many independent children’s hospitals serve as a medical school’s teaching hospital.