Verity Healthcare

7 issues CEOs advised Becker’s this 12 months that sign the place healthcare ought to go


Healthcare’s future is not formed by sweeping coverage modifications or shiny new tech alone — it is within the decisions and priorities of the leaders working the methods at this time. 

The CEOs on the helm of well being methods typically reveal the place the {industry} is headed, not all the time with flashy declarations, however by means of candid remarks and actions they make daily. This 12 months, these insights spanned a few of the most urgent points in healthcare. From the realities of a payer combine dominated by authorities reimbursements to rethinking workforce growth, entry and what it means to guide, leaders’ views can supply a transparent window into what’s to come back.

Listed here are seven key takeaways from conversations with well being system CEOs all through this previous 12 months that time to the challenges — and alternatives — prone to proceed shaping 2025.

1. “I believe we now have a math drawback in healthcare.” – Kevin Mahoney, CEO of College of Pennsylvania Well being System

“Medicare for all, Medicare for none — the controversy goes on and on. Whereas we’re speaking about it, we’re changing into a single-payer system,” Mr. Mahoney stated on the Becker’s Annual Assembly.

When Mr. Mahoney started his tenure with Penn Medication in 1996, its payer combine was roughly 60% industrial and 40% governmental reimbursement. Right this moment, it has flipped to almost 63% government-paid, or as he put it, “authorities underpaid.” This shift highlights a vital funding problem for the six-hospital system, with lots of of outpatient places, the place 60% of revenue margins go to analysis, 25% to well being system capital and 15% to training.

The “math drawback” Mr. Mahoney refers to extends past funds, reflecting broader demographic shifts that can deepen funding strains. By 2030, all child boomers will probably be 65 or older, doubling the Medicare-eligible inhabitants to almost 70 million from 2000 ranges. These shifts underscore the inevitability of governmental payer dominance, which well being methods should navigate with out the potential of reversing growing older tendencies.

“As a healthcare system, we now have important demographic tendencies that we now have to resist. You possibly can’t change your payer combine; individuals aren’t going to get youthful,” Mr. Mahoney stated. His remarks level to the urgency for revolutionary fashions to maintain care amid growing older populations and constrained funding.

2. “Individuals speak concerning the workforce scarcity of the long run. There’s solely a workforce scarcity of the long run in the event you do not do something at this time.” — Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Well being 

Mr. Dowling shared this thought when speaking to Becker’s in January concerning the new partnership between the well being system, Bloomberg Philanthropies and New York Metropolis Public Colleges to develop a healthcare-focused highschool, which is able to open in 2025 in Queens. Northwell is considered one of 13 well being methods taking part within the $250 million initiative from Bloomberg, through which well being methods accomplice with public faculty methods in city and rural areas to create a highschool with specialised healthcare curriculum, work-based studying and alternatives for graduates to maneuver instantly into high-demand healthcare jobs. 

As the biggest healthcare supplier and personal employer in New York, Northwell already reaches almost 100,000 college students yearly by means of its present instructional applications. It has a prolonged and rising record of instructional partnerships, scholarships and internships. 

Mr. Dowling’s remarks underscore a vital reality: the workforce challenges of tomorrow can’t be solved with short-term fixes. Sturdy workforces aren’t constructed on excessive signing bonuses, aggressive recruitment techniques, or reliance on AI-driven efficiencies alone. As a substitute, they’re solid by leaders with a imaginative and prescient for the long run who put money into upstream options, construct inclusive partnerships and develop pipelines for expertise that will not yield instant outcomes. Importantly, this management extends past constructing workforces for one’s personal group. It’s about contributing to a broader healthcare ecosystem, creating alternatives for people who might not work instantly in your system however will assist maintain the {industry} as an entire.

“Start considering extra broadly concerning the function it is best to have,” Mr. Dowling stated. “Do not suppose narrowly about what you do inside your group. Take into consideration how one can affect and turn into a change agent for different establishments to be concerned in training exterior your group.” 

This work is private for Mr. Dowling. He was the primary individual in his household to attend school, graduating from College School Cork in Eire whereas working as much as 120 hours per week in odd jobs to fund his tuition. He immigrated to the US within the Nineteen Seventies and has led Northwell since 2002, however his firsthand experiences with poverty, classism and unequal entry to alternative proceed to form his method to management and well being. 

“After I was a child myself and needed to go to school, I did not have any publicity to those issues. After I went to school, my eyes have been opened to the probabilities,” Mr. Dowling stated. “That is what we give these youngsters. There is not any restrict to what these youngsters can do in the event you open up the likelihood for them.”

3. “Psychological well being could be very a lot one thing that each single considered one of us experiences. It isn’t any individual else’s drawback, it is our drawback.” — Elizabeth Wako, MD, President and CEO of Swedish Well being Companies

Behavioral and psychological healthcare continued to align extra carefully with bodily and medical healthcare in 2024, a shift that’s wanted, warranted but in addition difficult in some methods for the leaders who run legacy well being methods through which psychological healthcare was historically extra siloed. That is what makes views like that of Dr. Wako all of the extra orienting.

Dr. Wako was appointed to the highest place of Swedish, a five-hospital system based mostly in Seattle, in 2023. She started working as a registered nurse caring for psychiatric sufferers, an expertise that left her with a firsthand understanding of the wants, care gaps and judgments endured within the specialty. She frolicked within the house well being setting, inpatient involuntary hospital drugs, and the group house setting with sufferers who had behavioral well being wants and have been experiencing homelessness.

“The extra we faux like psychological well being is its personal particular illness, the extra we’ll be unable to deal with psychological well being,” she shared with Becker’s at its 14th Annual Assembly.

She advocates for expanded entry factors, elevated reimbursement for providers and the mixing of psychological well being assets inside main care settings. Dr. Wako additionally sees the mixing of psychological and first care as vital to handle wants in a manageable method, and the system is working to increase main care and embed psychological well being assets inside all main care clinics. 

“That is a aim that I believe all of us ought to have: it is best to be capable to see your main care supplier have an evaluation finished, an analysis made, after which a direct switch to a psychological well being skilled to have the ability to begin having that dialog with you,” Dr. Wako stated. 

As a frontrunner with a big platform, Dr. Wako is intentional in how she communicates about psychological well being and strongly rejects the notion that it exists in isolation. She employs the metaphor of a wave when describing psychological well being wants. Whether or not a sine wave or an ocean wave, psychological well being exists on a continuum, she insists.

“You might be on the prime of the wave or sit on the backside of the wave, however there’s all the time a wave,” she stated in a Becker’s Healthcare podcast. “Generally you’re drawn again deep into the ocean — sort of the darkish depth of the oceans. Generally you are resting within the daylight on the white sands. The wave, nonetheless, is all the time transferring. It is all the time coming in and it is all the time going out. So I’d say accepting that psychological well being is regular and it is our human plight — that is half the battle of managing psychological well being. It is regular.”

4. “Outdated-school M&A is lifeless.” – Rod Hochman, MD, President and CEO of Windfall

Windfall is just not specializing in buying hospitals, Dr. Hochman stated at Becker’s twelfth Annual CEO+CFO Roundtable. “We do not suppose that is what the way forward for well being and healthcare goes,” he added.

His feedback got here as hospital M&A exercise elevated in late 2024, pushed partially by divestitures of Steward Well being Care. The pandemic and instant post-pandemic years introduced on totally different flavors of hospital M&A, together with cross-regional mergers. At the very least half a dozen hospital offers have been referred to as off or unwound in 2024, too, with some dissolved after FTC intervention. 

As Windfall transitions management to COO Erik Wexler, Dr. Hochman’s pivot displays a broader realization: the way forward for healthcare integration might emphasize partnerships and collaborations over conventional acquisitions. The main target will doubtless shift towards networked care fashions and shared capabilities to handle value pressures and affected person expectations with out overextending methods financially.

5. “There’s some those that speak about ‘the comeback.’ And to that, some individuals say: ‘We by no means left.'” — Bob Riney, CEO of Henry Ford Well being

2024 marked a excessive for CEO turnover throughout all industries. This charge of change solely makes leaders like Mr. Riney stand out extra. 

Mr. Riney started working at Henry Ford in 1978 as a school scholar, drawn to its enterprise ideas and complexity. He has since grown with the group by means of three distinct chapters: from main human relations as CHRO, to mastering operations as COO, and now guiding your complete system as president and CEO.

Simply as Mr. Riney’s profession developed, so too has Henry Ford Well being and its hometown, Detroit. Collectively, they provide a compelling reminder that “comebacks” typically seem sudden solely to those that have not been paying consideration. Whereas disruptors and tech-centric innovators typically steal the highlight, Mr. Riney’s story highlights the actual energy of leaders and organizations that embrace their historical past, lean into their tradition and values, and try to emulate their very own finest variations slightly than mimicking others. 

“Cities, regardless of how thriving they’re at anybody time, undergo life cycles,” Mr. Riney stated. “Having a long-term view and realizing that you could work by means of the ugly elements of cycles and rise once more is one thing that is actually vital. It is true of management and it is true of organizations.”

Residence to 633,218, Detroit is a testomony to the vulnerabilities of single-industry economies and the facility of reinvention 11 years after its $18 billion chapter. Towards this backdrop of city renewal, Henry Ford Well being is writing its personal transformation story. The system, which admitted its first sufferers in 1915 as Ford Motor Co. celebrated its millionth Mannequin T, has grown right into a $12 billion enterprise. Its newest chapter, a three way partnership with Ascension Michigan, reestablishes it because the Detroit space’s largest well being system by web affected person income.

Main a well being system will not be any simpler in 2025 than it was in 2024. Mr. Riney exemplifies the sort of management healthcare wants: loyal, humble, considerate and guided by an even bigger imaginative and prescient. The COVID-19 pandemic noticed quite a lot of CEOs postpone job modifications; it should not take a disaster for loyalty and dedication to be celebrated. In 2025, watch for many who keep the course, even throughout the hardest cycles. 

6. “The very first thing I have a look at each morning is the system dashboard exhibiting each metric throughout all efficiency standards in our well being system.” — Howard Chrisman, MD, CEO of Northwestern Medication 

“I can let you know OR begin occasions at NM Kishwaukee and affected person lag time for our dermatology clinic in downtown Chicago,” Dr. Chrisman advised Becker’s this previous summer season shortly after marking his first 12 months within the prime function.

Dr. Chrisman’s operational focus is not solely attributable to his time spent as COO of the tutorial well being system earlier than assuming the CEO function in 2023. It additionally displays how entry is just not a difficulty delegated to different senior leaders: It’s very a lot a CEO subject headed into 2025 as wait occasions climb throughout the U.S. The typical wait time for the third subsequent out there appointment throughout 11 medical specialties in 23 U.S. metro areas is 38 days, starkly contrasting with the standard 14-day benchmark.

“As a brand new chief, you need to set the tone and the tradition. After I attain out to doctor leaders, I get it. I am nonetheless seeing sufferers. My begin time is not there typically, for quite a lot of causes. So after I name them, it is like, ‘I’ve observed your physicians are splendidly productive, they’re busy, however the lag time is 70 days. How can I assist?'” 

Northwestern Medication incorporates the 943-bed Northwestern Memorial Hospital, located within the coronary heart of downtown Chicago. The system’s attain has expanded all through the town and Northern Illinois previously decade, and it continues to develop with plans to open a 120,000-square-foot superior outpatient care heart within the metropolis’s Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Facet in 2025.

All year long, CEOs remarked to Becker’s that it shouldn’t take a well-connected relationship to healthcare to obtain well timed appointments or entry into well being methods. Dr. Chrisman’s remarks and regular concern about entry into Northwestern Medication sign that even for leaders at massive built-in methods with gifted government groups, entry at this time is simply as significant as a corporation’s 10-year strategic plan. 

7. “It’s important to actually take pleasure in it, and it’s important to like individuals. This can be a individuals enterprise. If you happen to do not like individuals, you should not be on this enterprise.” — Peter Fantastic, Former CEO of Banner Well being

The comment, whereas easy on its face, serves as a profound reminder in an {industry} that usually emphasizes strategic planning, M&A, monetary acumen and medical experience over foundational individuals expertise. But, as Mr. Fantastic underscored in his career-end interview with Becker’s, the connective tissue between these domains should be a real love for individuals. That is particularly the case as AI continues to increase its function in healthcare operations, care supply and workflows. 

His perspective provides beneficial steering not just for aspiring leaders but in addition for the boards and groups chargeable for figuring out and appointing them. Sturdy interpersonal expertise and a real love for individuals will differentiate leaders able to navigating each the complexities of the job and the speedy integration of recent applied sciences.

“The mixture of liking individuals, working with individuals and recognizing how troublesome this enterprise is and that it requires a ardour for complexity and a excessive tolerance for ambiguity — you are able to do very nicely and survive very nicely in the event you perceive these issues and behave such as you perceive these issues,” he stated.

Mr. Fantastic led Phoenix-based Banner Well being as president and CEO since 2000, remodeling it into the biggest non-public employer in Arizona. Beneath his management, the system expanded to function in six states, encompassing 33 acute-care hospitals, 50 pressing care places, lots of of clinics, a tutorial division and 55,000 staff. His successor, Amy Perry, now serves as CEO after serving as president of the system.

Post a Comment

Skip to content