
11 prime well being system C-suite priorities for higher affected person care in 2025
Enhancing affected person care stays a paramount aim for healthcare leaders navigating a fancy and quickly evolving panorama.
Becker’s collected insights from 94 well being system executives spotlight a collective dedication to reworking care supply by innovation, accessibility, and patient-centered methods. These leaders, representing a various vary of hospitals and well being techniques throughout the nation, are specializing in priorities corresponding to leveraging superior know-how, strengthening workforce resilience, enhancing well being fairness, and reimagining care fashions to fulfill the wants of their communities.
They’re additionally all audio system on the Becker’s fifteenth Annual Assembly, April 28-Might 1 in Chicago. Click on right here to study extra and register!
Beneath, we summarize the highest 11 priorities recognized by these executives to enhance affected person care within the years forward.
1. Enhancing entry to care: Many leaders emphasised the necessity to improve entry by increasing providers, lowering wait occasions, and leveraging know-how corresponding to telehealth and digital care. This consists of addressing limitations like transportation, monetary constraints, and availability of care in rural areas.
“Over the following two to a few years, my prime precedence for enhancing affected person care will probably be to broaden entry by extending hours, rising the variety of suppliers, and including extra pressing care websites in our community,” stated Shelly Schorer, CFO of the California division of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Well being. “Moreover, guaranteeing that our nursing groups have the required staffing and assets to offer high-quality care is essential. It is usually crucial that we keep a continued deal with security and high quality by actively collaborating in excessive reliability applications to drive enhancements and improve affected person outcomes.”
2. Leveraging know-how and AI: A recurring theme was the combination of superior applied sciences, together with synthetic intelligence for diagnostics, predictive analytics, digital scribe instruments, and distant monitoring to streamline operations and improve decision-making.
“Our groups are our best energy, and we’re devoted to integrating superior applied sciences, corresponding to ambient AI, to help our groups whereas redesigning care supply to make sure sufferers obtain care extra seamlessly and effectively,” stated Wendy Horton, PharmD, CEO of UVA Well being College Medical Heart in Charlottesville, Va. “Our final aim is to assist sufferers get well sooner, return dwelling safely, and expertise unparalleled effectivity. Constructing on important progress, together with redesigning care within the emergency division, we’re excited to proceed driving innovation and enhancing affected person outcomes as we stay up for 2025 and past.”
3. Specializing in patient-centered care: Leaders highlighted customized drugs, cultural humility, and shared decision-making as important elements of care. Enhancing empathy and communication between suppliers and sufferers was a central precedence.
“Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles is devoted to advancing our scientific practices and cutting-edge analysis to offer options to avoid wasting lives,” stated Lara Khouri, government vice chairman and COO of Kids’s Hospital Los Angeles. “Our utmost precedence is enhancing well being and offering one of the best look after youth and their households. This consists of persevering with to prioritize digital well being innovation and AI options to enhance our distinctive affected person expertise and scale back the EHR burden, which may unlock our caregivers to deal with delivering wonderful affected person care.”
4. Constructing a resilient healthcare workforce: Workforce stability, lowering burnout, and fostering a tradition of security and collaboration had been highlighted. Methods included investing in workers well-being, skilled growth, and modern recruitment and retention approaches.
“At the start, we should spend money on our workers to permit them to be at their finest as they look after our sufferers,” stated Margie Zyble, chief human assets officer of UC Well being in Cincinnati. “An engaged, various, and resilient workforce interprets to best-in-class affected person care. Second, we’re dedicated to making a excessive reliability atmosphere with a robust deal with processes and behaviors. We have to scale back variability in key areas…high quality, security, individuals chief practices, and worker methods of working. In the end, this can permit us to create an atmosphere that allows excellent affected person care.”
5. Strengthening excessive reliability: Many executives prioritized high-reliability practices, lowering care variability, and specializing in evidence-based care to enhance affected person outcomes and scale back preventable hurt.
“We’re deeply invested in our Excessive Reliability Group journey, and a important a part of that is participating all our workers at a a lot deeper degree than ever earlier than. Efficient engagement, nonetheless, cannot occur with out wonderful communication throughout each service line,” stated Bernie Adams, chief high quality officer of North Nation Healthcare in Whitefield, N.H. “We all know that communication is handiest when it is backed by information that isn’t solely correct but in addition accessible and actionable. Over the following few years, we goal to deal with streamlining our information techniques to make sure that all workforce members — from frontline workers to management — have the instruments they should make knowledgeable choices.”
6. Addressing well being fairness: Tackling social determinants of well being, eliminating disparities, and guaranteeing equitable entry to care, particularly for underserved populations, had been steadily talked about.
“One in all Intermountain Well being’s prime priorities for enhancing affected person care over the following two to a few years is enhancing entry to care by leveraging know-how options, simplifying administrative processes, and redesigning care fashions to proactively deal with well being issues early; merely stated, going upstream to maintain individuals nicely,” stated JP Valin, MD, chief scientific officer of Salt Lake Metropolis-based Intermountain Well being. “We may even proceed to deal with equitable entry for sufferers throughout our footprint, together with our rural communities and people going through limitations from social determinants of well being. By addressing these challenges, we goal to create a extra inclusive and proactive healthcare system that advantages sufferers, caregivers, and the communities we serve.”
7. Enhancing affected person expertise: Simplifying non-clinical touchpoints, enhancing navigation, and guaranteeing seamless interactions with the healthcare system had been famous as important for enhancing affected person satisfaction. Cliff Megerian, MD, CEO of College Hospitals in Cleveland, stated his workforce is doubling down on their “well-earned status for compassionate care” subsequent 12 months.
“The aim is for our sufferers — our visitors — to really feel actually cared for at every touchpoint alongside the affected person journey, with scientific and non-clinical caregivers alike each bearing the duty to make this occur,” he stated. “The phrase ‘hospitality’ has at its root the phrase ‘hospital’ — it is our aim to work to deliver that ‘hospitality’ vitality to our work in healthcare, at all times knowledgeable by world-class science.”
8. Innovating care supply fashions: Emphasis was positioned on versatile, patient-centric approaches corresponding to hospital-at-home applications, built-in care networks, and outpatient providers for historically inpatient procedures.
“Over the following 2-3 years, we’re excited to proceed to spend money on modern care supply fashions by using digital care and distant affected person monitoring know-how to deliver care nearer to our sufferers’ entrance porches,” stated Tiffany Lawrence, president and CEO of Sanford Fargo. “Throughout a time of speedy disruption, our clinicians are embracing cutting-edge options, together with robotic surgical procedure and AI-enabled colonoscopy know-how, to ship probably the most superior care and finest outcomes. We are going to proceed prioritizing investments in know-how to adapt to the evolving healthcare panorama and higher serve our sufferers.”
9. Harnessing information and analytics: Many leaders recognized the necessity for real-time, actionable information to drive enhancements in scientific care, operational effectivity, and useful resource allocation. Jeff Gautney, CIO of Rush College System for Well being in Chicago, stated the system plans to do the next for improved affected person care with information and analytics:
Enhancing entry to care, and streamlining processes in order that we’re maximizing their time;
Lowering administrative burden on our clinicians in order that they’re able to spend extra time with the affected person and fewer time documenting
Offering AI-enabled protocols to assist clinicians making higher diagnostic and therapeutic choices that take probably the most full info accessible concerning the affected person and their drawback
Help new fashions for care, together with digital specialty care, digital main care, hospital at dwelling, and so on.
“We’ve got a novel perspective on this, provided that now we have been No. 2 in high quality within the Vizient course of for the previous few years. High quality and security are our model, so that is one thing we take into consideration on a regular basis,” stated Mr. Gautney.
10. Increasing value-based care: Shifting focus upstream to deal with well being issues early and forestall illness by neighborhood engagement, screenings, and wellness applications was highlighted as a path to sustainable healthcare techniques.
“A prime precedence for enhancing well being over the following two to a few years includes integrating inhabitants well being methods into conventional healthcare,” stated Heath Roberts, chief administrative officer for Henry Ford Well being Wholesome Populations in Detroit. “By leveraging value-based care initiatives, we goal to cut back pointless hospitalizations by proactive care administration, specializing in high-risk populations with power circumstances. Strengthening care transitions, notably post-discharge, and increasing community-based assets will assist deal with social determinants of well being and enhance general inhabitants wellness.”
11. Constructing a tradition of transparency: Well being techniques with a robust tradition can obtain efficiency enchancment and supply higher affected person care. Many executives see transparency and belief as important parts of a extremely dependable group, and CEOs are taking daring steps to reshape system tradition.
“Our prime precedence proper now inside that journey is embedding psychological security because the foundational component,” stated Peter Banko, president and CEO of Baystate Well being in Springfield, Mass. “We wish to finest allow our 13,000 unimaginable caregivers to freely voice issues, report potential points earlier than they turn out to be larger points, admit errors with out worry of adverse penalties, and study from our errors. Pivoting in the direction of a tradition of openness and transparency is completely important for extremely dependable affected person care in a fancy educational security internet well being system. This relentless affected person care enchancment focus additionally creates important understanding, momentum, and camaraderie for our different strategic priorities.”