Executive Summary

Relentless. This was the word that came up again and again throughout the two days of discussions among the nearly 20 top healthcare CEOs in the country who attended Huron Healthcare’s annual CEO Forum. The need for relentless communication with stakeholders, from employees to community partners; dealing with relentless change; and maintaining relentless, reality-based optimism about the future of the healthcare industry.

CEO attendees at the Forum represented a broad range of organizations, from larger multi-hospital systems to smaller community hospitals, across urban and rural communities. Each one is on its own unique path to achieving the imperatives of delivering high quality, affordable care, operating on different timelines with different strengths.

Drawing on their diverse experiences, CEO attendees shared their visions for the future of the industry — as well as the challenges they face in making those visions a reality. Frank discussions of what’s working and not working led to useful insights and new ideas.

Despite the pronounced variability in visions, methods and timing for moving their organizations forward, CEO attendees agreed: strong leadership will be essential to guide healthcare organizations through this time of deep uncertainty and tumultuous change.

For additional insights on effective leadership and making strategic visions real, CEO attendees heard from top executives who lead organizations in industries other than healthcare. The message from those executives was surprisingly consistent: intellectual honesty, organizational values, and communication form the bedrock of strong leadership. In their “back-to-basics” advice, these guest speakers shared what core leadership competencies look like in action. They also encouraged the CEO attendees to rethink what the future of leadership could look like for the healthcare industry.

The key opportunities and challenges on CEOs’ minds this year were:

• Moving From Volume to Value: Making the New Healthcare Business Model a Reality
• Changing the Care Delivery Model: Re-imagining the Who, What, When, Where, and How of Delivering Care
• Physician Relationships: Imperatives for Achieving Alignment
• Cost Containment: Coping With Significantly Reduced Reimbursement Rates

Leadership imperatives the executives discussed included:

• Modeling Optimism and Energy: Protecting Stakeholders from “Future Shock”
• Achieving Corporate Social Engagement: Communicating to Inspire and Engage
• Accelerating Talent: Cultivating New Leaders

Using the burning platform of federal and market reform as a catalyst to do the hard work that remains to be done provides the chance, as one CEO said, to “fix 99 percent of the dumb stuff we’ve done.” The prevailing mood among CEOs was one of renewed determination and resolve in their efforts to transform healthcare delivery at their organizations to the benefit of the communities they serve — and the country as a whole.