Becker's Hospital Review

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP 132 Sandra Bruce President and CEO, Presence Health (Chicago) "One of my worst moments was when I had to suspend a physician from the medical staff for poor clinical outcomes. e physician had been a mentor to me and had helped promote me for my first CEO job." Michael Ugwueke President and CEO, Methodist Healthcare Memphis (Tenn.) Hospitals "In the 29 years I've been doing this, I've experienced a number of challenges in all situations. What comes to mind is dealing with physicians not as your employees, but as your partners. You may have a very talented physician who has issues with something, but you must try to deal with this situation and get him or her to try to understand that they're going to derail. With all the talent they have, trying to salvage situations like that is difficult. Situations where there's a group trying to break up are also difficult. From an administrator's point of view, you need and would like them to stay in tact. But sometimes it comes down to personalities, which makes it harder to reason. You become the mediator and the go-between, which is very time-consuming. It's rewarding when you're able to resolve those issues to, hopefully, everyone's satisfaction." Kim Bordenkircher CEO, Henry County Hospital (Napoleon, Ohio) "My toughest moments are the times when I have to support or counsel a healthcare practitioner who's had a tough professional moment. I have to help them figure out that they're not a failure. Immediately a few instances come to mind. For example, one physician sat with me and said he was just burned out. He was one of the most compassionate doctors I knew. I had to figure out how to help him regain that spirit. It was also challenging for me to reflect on my encounters with him and wonder why I didn't notice he was burned out. Another was a physician for whom I had the utmost respect. While resuscitating one of his patients, he le and didn't return. I asked his secretary to track him down. She called his wife, who told her he was sitting in a chair and not talking to her. Healthcare is a physically, emotionally and psychologically demanding profession. As an administrator, I feel it's my job to take care of the caregivers and provide the environment for people to save lives. You encounter people all the time who are heroes, and it's tough when you see the lights go out in somebody that's a hero." Cliff Robertson, MD President and CEO, CHI Health (Omaha, Neb.) "Early in my career as a physician leader, I was thrust into a tense situation in which our organization was faced with the recognition that a major strategic initiative — a joint venture medical group — was failing and needed to be completely unwound. While I wasn't involved in the initial decision, I was in the middle of a very difficult, rigorous internal debate about whether to stay the course with this fairly dramatic decision — and if we did stay the course, how were we going to make the new strategy successful aer we separated from this medical group? e hardest thing I had to do was take a step back, acknowledge the facts didn't support continuing our relationship with the group, and understand that leadership — myself included — needed to accept this reality and successfully lead a complete directional change in a very important part of our operations. As a leader, I recognized how tough it was not to be demoralized by the failed initiative. But then I related this particular episode back to the thousands of treatment decisions I had made as a clinician, some of which didn't result in the desired outcome. As a physician, it's second nature to accept the need for course corrections or alternative treatment plans and to listen to contradictory opinions from consulting specialists. As leaders, we must listen to others and be willing to correct our course when needed." Chris Van Gorder President and CEO, Scripps Health (San Diego) "When I arrived at Scripps more than 15 years ago, the organization was struggling and there was little cooperation between the physicians and the administration — in fact, there was a lot of anger. e previous CEO had unveiled a new strategic direction and an operational approach to achieve the strategy but it was not supported much outside the corporate office. ings got to the point where medical staff at four of our five hospitals held no confidence votes and soon the board of trustees asked the CEO to resign. When I was appointed interim CEO, I had to find a solution to bring our physicians and administration together. One of the first things I did was form the Physician Leadership Cabinet, made up of the system's elected physician leaders, with the CMO and me as co-chairs. I told the doctors we needed to mutually share our concerns and knowledge — fill the gap of information

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