Becker's Hospital Review

21 CEO / STRATEGY The No. 1 healthcare challenge, per 150 leaders By Alexis Kayser Healthcare leaders are zeroed in on growth and modernization, according to a recent report from Optum. The company surveyed 150 healthcare leaders from the vice president level and up. Eighty-five percent of respondents came from the C-suites of health providers, plans, employers, life science organizations and government agencies. When asked what they consider the industry's greatest challenges, nearly half of leaders mentioned growth. This is a result of the current economic environment, which is forcing organizations to take a defensive approach, according to Optum. Here are the top challenges facing healthcare right now, as ranked by the industry's decision-makers: 1. Growth — 49 percent of leaders mentioned this 2. System modernization — 39 percent 3. Workforce challenges — 35 percent 4. Lowering the total cost of care — 34 percent 5. Data security — 33 percent 6. Data and analytic insight — 32 percent 7. Financial sustainability — 31 percent 8 (tie). Reducing administrative spend — 29 percent 8 (tie). Emerging technology — 29 percent 10 (tie). Organizational agility — 27 percent 10 (tie). Price transparency — 27 percent 12. Evolving payment methods — 23 percent 13. Changing regulatory policy — 21 percent 14. New consumer expectations — 20 percent 15 (tie). Improving health equity — 17 percent 15 (tie). Access to care — 17 percent 15 (tie.). Evolving delivery methods — 17 percent 18 (tie). New market disruptors — 3 percent 18 (tie). Supply chain disruption — 3 percent n Indiana hospital hires chief nursing officer as CEO By Andrew Cass Tara McVay, MSN, RN, has been named president and CEO of Logansport (Ind.) Memorial Hospital, effective Aug. 7. She will be the first female president in the almost 100-year history of the hospital, according to an Aug. 1 Logansport Memorial news release. Ms. McVay has been with the hospital since 1997 and served in a variety of nursing roles throughout the organization. She joined the executive leadership team in 2013 and was named chief nursing officer in 2015. n Boards' ask of C-level execs? Plain language By Molly Gamble C orporate and industry jargon is holding less weight with board directors, who are increasingly making an effort to bar it from the boardroom completely, Fortune reports. e move away from unnecessarily specialized or coded language requires changes of both executives and board members. When daily operations and conversations are peppered with jargon, it takes some habit reversal to weed it out. "On the surface, it can look like an attempt to obfuscate and confuse, when it's generally not that," Barbra Kingsley, PhD, chair of the nonprofit Center for Plain Language, told Fortune. "It's people that are just trying to be efficient and speedy and take complex concepts or terms or whatever and use the jargon that is commonly known within some subset of the business community." Board members usually accept jargon if their familiarity or understanding of an industry outside their own is limited. But if they want executives to use plain language, they too will have to step up their insider know-how to better press for simplicity and ask clarifying questions. A groupwide push for simple language can help eliminate fears of asking "dumb questions," which are oen necessary to establish understanding. For executives, plain language is not only a matter of word choice but necessity and concision. is translates not only to the spoken word, but to written materials, slide decks and presentations. Organizations can place greater emphasis on the audience's perspective to help executives, speakers and presenters properly tailor their communication. Will Houston, from executive search firm Egon Zehnder, told Fortune one of the most impressive presentations he knows of was delivered by a CISO who condensed everything the directors of a power company needed to know into one PowerPoint slide. "'ese are the bad actors that are trying to attack us; these are the means they're using to do it; this is the vulnerability that they're trying to exploit; this is what we're doing to address that vulnerability; this is what it'll cost us if we're unsuccessful. And then this is what it's going to cost for us to address it; this is how much we can reduce the risk — in a real clear visual layout,'" Mr. Houston said. "Two or three of the board members came up to him aerward and said, 'is is the first time I've understood where we stand and what we're doing.'" n

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