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It’s risky not to embrace risk

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This WittKieffer report tells us why and how healthcare organizations should embrace risk.


More children’s hospitals looking outside sector for leaders

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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.


How can small hospitals stay independent?

 

 

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In this era of  hospital partnering and consolidation, is there an argument for smaller and rural hospitals to go it alone and remain independent?

Or, as this article  by Beth A. Nelson,  a consultant in the healthcare practice of the executive-search firm Witt/Kieffer,  in Hospitals & Health Networks, asks: “If not, is there a degree of creative partnering that affords local facilities independence and control, yet also access to broader services and lower costs?”

In talking with chief executives at some independent hospitals, she found various strategies for keeping as much independence as possible and the rationales for doing so.

Tim Putnam, president and CEO of Margaret Mary Health, a critical access hospital in Batesville, Ind., noted the central civic threat involved in small and rural hospitals being gobbled up by systems:

“When independent hospitals join larger systems, the mission to the local community first and foremost goes away”.

John Solheim, CEO of Cuyuna Regional Medical Center,  in Crosby, Minn.,  told her that independent hospitals tend to be nimble and can adapt easily to local needs, something that’s difficult  with a big system.

Steven Long, FACHE, president and CEO of Hancock Regional Hospital, in Greenfield, Ind., said that citizens look at the local hospital as ”their hospital and maintain a strong sense of ownership and commitment to it,” H&HN said.

Still,  the decision whether to remain independent ”usually comes down to finances,”  the article noted. {In place of “usually” we’d use the words “virtually always”.}

In any event,  the article says, ”The trick to staying local and ‘going it alone’ is often through configuring creative but limited partnerships with larger systems.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


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