What are the key roles in the Healthcare C-Suite today. What do you do if you don't have the money to hire all of these roles? Today we discuss.
Today in health, it. We're going to talk about modernizing the healthcare. C-suite my name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health. I said, have channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders.
Gordian dynamics, Quill health. Tau site nuance, Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Alright, came across this interesting articles story. It looks like it was from an interview that was done. It's in the new England journal of medicine catalyst. , innovations in care delivery.
The title of the story is modernizing the healthcare C-suite and they did a, an interview. With, , David Labarsky. Who is a doctor MBA. , vice chancellor of human health, sciences, and chief executive officer. At UC Davis health system. And the conversation looks like it's stemmed from. A question around what is the modern healthcare C-suite look like and what you have as you have the traditional roles that are still part of the C-suite. Obviously you saw the CFO, you saw the COO.
The, , Chief medical officer amongst others. But, , he goes on to talk about a handful of other titles that he's looking at, and I'm going to go through some of these real quick and then we'll do the, so what at the end chief strategy officer or chief transformation officer, the chief strategy or transformation officer.
Needs to determine how to partner with other healthcare organizations. Payers government and public health to create win-win solutions for everyone. The varsity references, a 2021. New England journal of medicine catalyst article that describes how UC Davis has worked. To upskill its partners around the region to better take care of patients and serve the community. What a great role, what a great way of defining that role. To be honest with you.
All right, so I'm sorry. I'm getting into my, so what, at this point, chief strategy, chief transformation officer, but not only those titles. But how he defines it, a defines it as a, the person who creates new types of partnerships with other healthcare organizations, payers, and the He goes on chief digital health officer and chief innovation officer.
And as we look at those. The chief information officer has moved from caretaker implementer of the EMR into subordinate role to the new chief digital health officer, chief innovation officer technology is driving a lot of the change that we need to implement on behalf of our patients. It's critical that we meet evolving consumer demands.
Labarsky says a majority of patients now expect to be able to find medical information and set up appointments online and well beyond that, actually I will. Push them a little bit on that, , which he already knows. I mean, if he's saying this chief digital health officer and chief innovation officer, and essentially what he's saying is the chief information
Needs to move into those roles to move out of the caretaker implementer role into those roles. Again, , love where that is going. , chief experience officer many health
Let me try that again, many health organizations already, a chief patient experience officer. And do you see Davis changed this role to chief experience officer? Because it's not just the patients. And their families who need the best possible care experience, staff experiences matter as well. Staffing challenges, our healthcare CEO's current top priority.
The way you deal with that is you take really good care of your staff. Absolutely. So, what he's saying is if you already have a chief patient experience, officer, that's a person who already has the skillset, make them a chief experience officer. They have a broader set of responsibilities, which also focus in.
On your staff. And since clinician burnout is one of our top issues. This makes a heck of a lot of sense. Chief wellness officer, the chief wellness officer role became particularly critical as COVID-19 exacerbated frontline worker burnout and issues around retention. It's great. When you know, you're supposed to be resilient, but after a two year pandemic,
I think everybody's resilience has been tested. Labarsky says. Making sure that somebody is looking after the mental and physical wellbeing of our staff and our care providers is just the right thing to do. Chief wellness officer. Interesting. I think of this person, if you think of mash, , I think it was father Malkay. He was sort of the chief wellness officer.
He was the one who sort of milled around and talked to people obviously from a spiritual perspective, but also just from a wellness perspective, how you doing, keeping an eye on people and that, that kind of thing. So. , again, a critical role at this juncture as well. I've yet to disagree with anything he has on here so far. See.
, next one, chief marketing officer patients, aren't interested in being sold. The product of healthcare instead. They're loyal to the healthcare organizations. They can be proud of. That's an interesting way to say that that chief marketing officer at UC Davis directs the selling of the organization's core values, including diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice being careful stewards.
Of the environment, looking to the future for children and , for underserved communities. I like how he's talking about marketing. I like selling those aspects of marketing. , at the end of the day, though, your COO needs to deliver a That people can rely on for their health. You need to be, need to be the trusted partner for health in your communities. But if you listen to Steve jobs about marketing, this is absolutely what you're selling. You're selling all those intangibles of, we are a partner in the community. We are stewards of the environment.
, we care about equity. We care about social justice. We care about the things you care about, a good marketing campaign, good role to have. And I've said for years that we have not done marketing well in healthcare, clearly it doesn't take a rocket science test to take a bunch of money. And throw it on a billboard here and there and a plaster, your us news and world report rankings around and make sure that you sponsored the baseball team, the football team.
And the basketball team and your local markets. , I think we have to get more sophisticated. Our message has to get a better. As we go out there. So chief marketing officer is a critical role, chief. DEI officer diversity, equity inclusion. It's critical that everybody who comes into your organization truly feels.
They belong there Labarsky says, and that culturally and linguistically appropriate services. That are high class are truly provided while clinicians may strive to provide equal treatment. We don't even do that yet. He adds implicit biases exist. And healthcare leaders and staff must check themselves and each other, a DEI leader can ensure everyone gets trained.
But beyond that. They can help different care groups work toward equitable outcomes, not just equal treatment. DEI average should be given time funding and dedicated support. Okay. , I'm glad Yeah, I was, I was, I was wavering there until he got to the last line. DEI efforts should be given time funding and decades support. I think also we should have a compensation for CEOs tied to some of these initiatives. If we're going to go out there and wave this flag around.
, let's be serious about it. Let's have dedicated support, let's have funding and let's have compensation tied to it. So chief DEI officer, and then she sustainability officer from reducing plastic and. And aesthetic waste and greenhouse gas emissions to constructing LEED certified buildings. This is the only one I'm going to disagree with now because I, I, I disagree with this concept. I absolutely agree with this concept.
And I believe we need to be stewards of the environment that we live in, especially in the communities that we serve. , we need to be leaders, especially as the largest employer in most cities in places that we operate, we need to be there. And so why would I say we need dedicated person for DEI, but not for sustainability? ,
Because I don't think we need that. , chief sustainability officer, I think it's, I think it's overkill. I think we need. , consultants come in and work with our teams. And our teams have great ideas for sustainability and, , had a great conversation. With, , , Dr. Michael Pfeffer from Stanford around this and the initiatives that they're doing.
, did not come from a chief sustainability officer just came from the organization itself. He asked, do you know, what's a, what's a core value. What should we be working on? And, and up from the team came, we should be the most sustainable it organization. In the country. And then they develop the plans and programs around that.
Now the reason I say consultants is because sometimes we don't know the thing we did there's areas we don't know and understand, but I think a consultant could help us in that. , that's the only one I would say no to, but here's the big question. And this is maybe the, so what, you're probably listening to this going, man, they must have a lot of money and it's, you know, it's the UC system.
So they have college and education money. They're an academic medical center. So they have, , AMC type money. And, , and they're part of a, an extremely large system in the state of California. So, and they get research dollars. You get it, you get the picture so they can afford to have all of these roles.
What happens if you're a system that cannot have all of these roles, what are you to do? So let's, let's go back through these chief strategy officer, chief transformation officer. , if you don't have the money for that, what's the best role or how do you. , come up with this, and this is the person who determines, , you know, remember back it's the, it's the partnerships,
, other healthcare organizations, payers, government, public health. , you know, who's driving these relationships. Well, it could be the head of your medical group. It can be the COO who is driving some of those relationships. It could be the hospital system CEOs that could be given some of It depends how big your system is. If you're a single hospital system.
, then, , you know, this is probably the CEO, quite frankly, see whatever the group of a C-suite that you do have at a one hospital system or a smaller health system. You're just sharing these concepts across that entire team she's strategy and transformation officer in a little larger system, maybe a billion dollar health system.
, again, you might be looking at one of your hospital CEOs. You might be looking at. , the CEO themselves, or, , I don't know. I mean, you could look at a lot of difference, but this has to be somebody who sees things in terms of relationships and building out. Networks. To deliver care that that entire continuum
And looks at ways to benefit the communities that you're serving by building out partnerships. , chief digital health and chief innovation officer, clearly, if you're really small system, this is your CIO. And, , potentially some of these, some of these things can be handled by a vice-president of technology or whoever your chief.
Nerd is your chief tech person is if it's, if it's not your CIO, your CIO , handle this together. Sometimes the combination of CIO CMIO could do this pretty well as, , also chief experience officer. , if you don't have the money for this. This is a tough one. Because this is a combination of CIO and chief marketing officer, I think coming together or marketing coming together. There's an awful lot of things that, that fall into experience.
That, , that marketing people fundamentally understanding get a, so again, that's a stretch and the CIO is a little bit of a stretch here as well. Th th this is going to be. , a muscle that needs to be developed if you were going to build out these capabilities. So maybe CIO, CML, , if that's what you have in your single hospital or, or, or small system.
, chief wellness officer. I think if you have a, again, a small system, I think this has to go to your CMO. Or maybe even your, your, , if you have a nursing officer, maybe a nurse nursing officer, maybe there's a team of people that comes together for the wellness officer, but I think that role is critical.
, chief marketing officer, I think you have to have a head of marketing. So, , whether that's a chief or not, is. It depends on the size, I guess. , chief DEI officer, if you do not have the money to go out and spend on this. Then I think you're looking at HR, you're looking at the CEO. , again, if you're a small system and chief sustainability officer, as I said before, I don't think you need to hire for that role. I think this is something that you could quick tick off an initiative across your health system, and there's enough stuff out there, and you can bring a consultant to help you to really drive sustainability efforts across your entire health system.
So that's my really, that's my, so what sometimes you read these articles and you're like, oh my gosh, It must be great to have And, , the UC system evidently does have money. , but I think these, these are good roles and this is good ways to think about these, , these roles and responsibilities and, , incorporating them no matter how big you are.
, into, , the roles of the people that you do have because a lot of these things are going to be critical moving forward. All right. That's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week out.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify.
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