Becker's Hospital Review

37 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP 37 CEO / STRATEGY Advice 3 health system executives have for new hospital leaders By Hannah Mitchell F rom having global goals to being flex- ible with their leadership style, exec- utives from Temple Health, Scripps Health and BJC HealthCare gave their best advice for new hospital leaders. e following executives were featured in Becker's Healthcare podcasts. Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited. Michael Young. President and CEO of Temple University Health System (Phila- delphia): COVID-19 hit Philadelphia early on. ... We converted a former pediatric hospi- tal to a COVID-19 hospital in five days. You have to expect the unexpected, you have to think about what happens if this star doctor leaves, what happens if this star leader leaves, who's gonna fill in, because you need to make that decision today and implement it tomor- row. [You need to] focus on how all the piec- es fit together. Particularly, young executives tend to have very narrow goals. I see them cranking to get their goals done for May and June. I'd like them to think more globally: "How will this implementation or decision affect the rest of the organization?" In my ex- perience, I've seen other folks just do crazy things to survive, and then they're in a bad place. And I never like to leave an organiza- tion in a bad place. Ghazala Sharieff, MD. Chief Medical Officer of Acute Care, Clinical Excellence and Expe- rience and Corporate Senior Vice President at Scripps Health (San Diego): I think what I have learned through the years is that you have to be a situational leader. When we first started with COVID-19, there was so much fear, and so much anxiety and so much miscommuni- cation, coming from everywhere — from the county, from the state, from the CDC — and everybody was very confused. Sometimes I had to be more direct than I usually am. en we went back to the collaborative approach where we got leaders from across the orga- nization; they give us their opinion and then push that out to the organization. But there are different styles of leadership, and I think if you choose one style, you're destined to fail because not every situation is the same. e other thing that I learned, and I wish I'd learned sooner, was that you've got to let your team try things on their own. ere's a great quote by omas Jefferson: "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock." It basically says don't nitpick people, let them try something. It's a matter of style. Sometimes they're going to surprise you more than you even antici- pated. But if there's something that you really feel strongly about, that's the time to take a stance. You can't fight over everything. Jennifer Carron. Chief Patient Experience Officer at BJC HealthCare (St. Louis): I got my first job in healthcare operations. I was the executive assistant. I would be in the boardroom and I'd hear a lot about the issues that were going on. I decided that I wanted to get my administrator's license, and the day that I got my administrative license, I wrote the CEO a letter and explained how I'd turn his operations around. e next day, he walked into the office with the letter and said, "Jen, you said you could dance, now let's see it. Pack your stuff and get to work." at's exactly what I did, and it really launched my healthcare career. My advice to emerging leaders is to surround yourself with multiple mentors, educate yourself to the world that you started to be a part of both academically and operationally, because they're very dif- ferent. Be confident and be bold. n Arkansas hospital leadership target of no-confidence vote By Kelly Gooch S ome members of the medical staff at Medical Center of South Arkansas in El Dorado registered a no-confi- dence vote in the hospital's leadership, according to the News-Times. "These doctors, who have dedicated years of practice in this community to take care of the health of this communi- ty, have come together to say enough is enough," Ezinne Nwude, MD, chief of staff at the Medical Center of South Arkansas, confirmed June 5 to the newspaper. Dr. Nwude did not go into detail about the physicians' concerns. However, she told the News-Times that the no-confidence vote concerned the leadership spearhead- ed by Scott Street, who has served as CEO since 2017, and practices and policies that have affected care quality and staff morale. A letter about the vote was sent to the Medical Center of South Arkansas board of trustees. The hospital's owner, Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems, was also notified of the vote. Mr. Street addressed the situation in a June 6 internal memo to staff, shared with Becker's. "Some physicians have raised general concerns related to quality of care, patient safety and staffing at the hospi- tal. We take any concerns of this nature very seriously. We have met with the physicians, and we have asked them for detailed information and specific examples in order to investigate their concerns. To date, despite numerous re- quests for this information by the hospital, the information has not been provided by the physicians," he wrote. Still, he said the hospital has reviewed the general con- cerns each time they are raised, and so far, concerns have been unfounded. The hospital has now engaged an inde- pendent counsel to conduct a thorough and complete in- vestigation related to the concerns, he said. The hospital "desires a collegial, constructive and collabo- rative relationship with every member of our medical staff," and continues to have a high level of confidence in the care quality and safety environment provided for patients at Medical Center of South Arkansas, Mr. Street said. n

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