Five Things Every Healthcare Executive Should Focus On: Updated, Revised

More than two years ago I wrote a post regarding “five” things every SNF administrator should focus on and lo and behold, a reader asked late last week if I would revisit this subject.  She (the reader) is not an SNF administrator so she asked if I could focus more globally; sort of a “best practices” approach.  While each health care industry segment has its nuances, in reviewing my travels, the challenges and successes leaders have, where failures occur, and where careers are made and sustained, I quickly found commonality in approaches and focused competencies.

Healthcare leadership is complex and very dynamic.  The alchemy is nearly one-part inquisitor, one-part psychologist, and one-part theoretician.  Those that do well and thrive, regardless of industry segments, are today “global” thinkers capable of transitioning to tactician seamlessly.  They are outcome oriented and know the pieces of the puzzle well enough to be bull**it proof.  They think and act as if synergism is their main duty and they understand (acutely) the law of unintended consequences.   Bottom line: They see cause and effect and constantly seek ways to shorten the distance between the two.

Industry issues aside regarding changing reimbursement, regulation, etc., the focal core that I find as key and thus, displayed in action by the successful executives is as follows.

1. Quality: This is an oft used buzzword but very skilled and successful executives can articulate this for their business immediately.  In healthcare, quality is all about tangible outcomes that patients experience.  Going one step deeper, quality today is also about a measurable outcome at a particular cost.  In my economist jargon, this is about utility and warranty.  Utility is maximized in healthcare when the payer and the patient receive a desired, tangible outcome at a market or below market price.  Warranty in healthcare is about the outcome’s sustainable benefit to the patient and the payer.  Technical yes but this theory is a key focal area for healthcare executives.  Think about it tangibly in light of today’s issues.  Hospital executives need to understand this because it impacts re-hospitalizations.  The outcome must match the warranty or in other words, the care must be complete such that avoidable readmissions are low or non-existent.  For SNF executives, the same holds true but with a slight twist.  The SNF executive must deliver excellent care all while minimizing the risk areas that lead to re-hospitalizations such as infections, falls, and medication errors.  As a core competency, the best executives I work with didn’t wait for the government to tell them to reduce their falls, reduce their re-admissions, etc.  They knew these issues years ago and had already understood the relationships between quality or utility and warranty.
2. An Outside-Inside View: Where I find failings in healthcare leadership it almost always starts with executives that believe their challenges and their industry are utterly unique.  They not only bought the healthcare executive manual but they memorized it.  They seek only peer knowledge or interaction, often I believe to validate that “they” are doing the same thing everyone else is doing.  Alas, the story of the Lemmings on their way to the sea is cogent.  What I see as key competency among the best is that they have an “outside-inside” view competency.  This outside-inside view is characterized by looking beyond their industry at analogous problems or issues and seeking solutions that are applicable.  Yes, healthcare is unique but certainly not so unique that strong parallels in marketing, customer service, project management, systems design, etc. can’t be found via other industries.  Across my career, the best ideas I’ve used came from other industries – not healthcare.  I simply altered the concept to fit the situation.  Philosophically, “the coolest things in life exist in places where their aren’t any roads”; a quote from a former camp counselor to my son.  Developing this competency is all about forcing oneself to explore well beyond the industry noise, rhetoric and ideologies.
3. Small Spaces and Closet Organizers: As odd as this heading sounds, it makes sense to me when I see it applied.  The industry has run through its hey-day where bigger was better and, “if you build it, they will come”.  Really strong executives today have learned how to creatively adapt and re-adapt and they realize the core competency of “revenue contribution” per square foot is the new reality.  This competency area is all about revenue maximization and in a go-forward universe of revenue stagnation via reimbursement cuts and flat payments, using space efficiently and keeping the closets organized rather than overflowing with stuff not needed nor ever used, is the requirement.  Gone are the days where more is better or additional lines of inventory make sense.  This focus is truly a trend from manufacturing where realities on plant size, productive capacity and just-in-time inventory came to roost many years ago.
4. The True Meaning of Health Policy: This is about the Paul Harvey requiem; “the rest of the story”.  Health policy impacts are point in-time in terms of regulatory implications and reimbursement implications but woven together, a trend is evident.  This competency area is about knowing what the policy trends are, where Medpac is going and why and how the enterprise led should position accordingly.  I have written repeatedly that regardless of regulation and new laws like the PPACA, core issues about entitlement financing, sustainability of funding, etc. will beget certain and permanent changes in health policy.  Ignoring these realities and the resulting policy trends is akin to committing hara-kiri with a butter  knife; no one blow is fatal but the culmination of all blows leads to a slow, painful death.  Much is trending right now regarding networks, ACOs, bundled payments, pay-for-performance, accountability, fraud, etc.  Knowing not only the implication of each but how the same is directing the future is a core executive competency.
5. Freakonomist: OK, I’m stealing from a book title here but the point is simple: Healthcare executives need to understand at a certain level, core human behavior and economics.  I’m not talking about finance or reimbursement but behavioral economics.  One of the major problems or arguably, the single most demonic problem with healthcare today lies in the axiom that “what get’s rewarded, get’s done”.  We have lived too long on the native belief that acute, fee-for-service, episodic medicine or care is how the U.S. health system thrives.  Thus, we have overspent and over-taxed the system without regard to a potential breaking point.  We have arrived at such a point.  Today’s healthcare executive must realize this core reality and to survive and thrive, re-define his/her leadership to developing systems and services that prevent utilization or revise utilization to more of a minimalist plane.  Those that embody the philosophy that “better is better” rather than “more is better” will understand this innately.  This competency is about “solving” core problems and not chasing root, flawed ideologies of the past.  Profit and success will come via innovation and system-thinking not from finding new ways to exploit Medicare and Medicaid.