Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1020287
58 POPULATION HEALTH POPULATION HEALTH Q: How often do you meet with clinical staff or perform rounds? KL: I'm not based at a caregiving site. I'm in a corporate of- fice. The time where I get my hospital administrative fix is when I'm visiting our markets, which usually happens twice a month. Typically when I visit markets, the board and senior management team always want to take me on rounds and show me what's going on in their hospitals. Our CMO and chief nursing officer are in the President's Council. So when we're in the corporate meetings, they bring that clinical per- spective, but because I'm not a facility-based executive I don't do rounds in a traditional way. Q: How do you think your routine is different than other healthcare executives'? KL: The last thing I want to do is speak for how other people do their jobs, but I would generally say my job is more similar to CEOs who run national and multistate organizations, in- cluding large regional health systems. I would say one of the most important aspects of my job is learning how to manage in a virtual fashion. We're in 18 states, so I'm not going to be able to touch everyone. I can't just walk up to a unit and visit with people. We have done a good job of improving our technology to stay connected. We have even held the last couple of national market leader meetings — where we have senior leaders in operations across the country — virtu- ally. With the amount of travel I do and the amount of virtu- al communication we conduct, you have to be comfortable working with people you're not going to see everyday. Q: What is the hardest part of your day? KL: The travel is the job, so you get used to it. But I would say multicity travel weeks, with three different cities in the same week — those can get difficult. You're up and down at airports, going through security, checking into new hotels, different beds, different pillows. That is by far the hardest part of the day. When I'm home it's a much more regular schedule, but when I am on the road there will be evening events and you start again early in the morning. Sometimes you might land late at night and have an early meeting the next morning. Everybody is happy to have their corporate CEO in for a visit, so they want to show me as much as they can and meet with as many people as possible. Q: What is the most rewarding part of your day? KL: We have a great leadership team, not just on the cor- porate team but across the country. Our market leaders are phenomenal, and I love getting to meet the fabulous care- givers across CHI, such as our team in Texas that heroically dealt with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. I'm proud of the individual work we do and the care we provide for pa- tients across the country. The most directly rewarding aspect of my job is knowing I'm in a position to help make decisions that can improve the lives of millions of people that we take care of throughout the course of a year. It's not just what we do from the delivery standpoint but as a leading advocacy organization. Counting both inpatient and outpatient visits, CHI facilitates 10 million encounters per year, and we make decisions that can have a national impact. CHI serves as a beacon that other people can mod- el. We were the first national healthcare [organization] to fo- cus on violence prevention; we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary of our United Against Violence initiative. Most recently CHI, along with Boston-based Massachusetts Gen- eral Hospital and the American Hospital Association, led an effort that resulted in getting ICD-10 codes for providers that care for victims of human trafficking. When I know we can do things in our organization that wind up being a model for the country, that's a pretty rewarding area for me. Q: What's the last thing you do before you leave your office? KL: A lot of the days are challenging, filled with surprises and can stress you out, so I love to be able to connect with peo- ple, whether it's just closing out the day with my executive assistant or stopping by and chatting with people to see how their day went. One of the things I try to do a lot more of is have direct contact with employees here in the national of- fice and connect with staff, find out if they have any evening plans or weekend plans and see how their kids and grand- kids are doing. CHI annually sponsors anywhere from six to eight high school students here in Denver and a few more at our corporate office in Erlanger, Ky., outside of Cincinnati. We pay their tuition and have a work study program where they work one day a week at our offices. The person who coordinates that program sits right outside my office, so I'll always take some time to chat with the interns and see how they're doing. I'm more of an evening workout person and I try to go at least three days a week. Q: What do you do when you get home? KL: Typically, when I first get home it's all about unwinding a little bit. It might be a bike ride since that time of day is usual- ly pretty nice here in Denver. Usually I just relax, have dinner with my wife and spend some time with her. I also love to see my son who lives in Denver and my almost three -year- old granddaughter who lives here. The grandfather club is the best club anyone can to belong to. n "A lot of the days are challenging, filled with surprises and can stress you out, so I love to be able to connect with people, whether it's just closing out the day with my executive assistant or stopping by and chatting with people to see how their day went." — Kevin Lofton, CEO, CHI