Governance and Leadership Diversity

Governance and Leadership Diversity / en Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:46:56 -0500 Tue, 22 Apr 25 14:15:30 -0500 2025 AHA Leadership Summit /education-events/2025-aha-leadership-summit The <a href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/" target="_blank" title="2025 AHA Leadership Summit">2025 AHA Leadership Summit</a> senior health care executives, clinicians and experts in the field presenting innovative approaches for delivering better care and greater value, ensuring financial stability, addressing workforce challenges and improving the health care consumer experience through operational excellence, creative partnerships and redefined delivery models.Join a diverse community of strategic and visionary leaders who represent excellence in the field as they boldly transform their organizations.Our attendees include CEOs, COOs, CFOs, CMOs, CNOs, CIOs and other C-suite leaders, as well as VPs, Physician Leaders, Advanced Practice Professionals, Directors and Managers overseeing patient care, strategy, innovation, digital transformation, finance, workforce and policy.Additionally, the Summit welcomes emerging and next-generation health care leaders who are shaping the future of patient-centered care and health system transformation.<hr><h2>Leading Hospitals | Leading Health Care</h2>Leading HospitalsLearn with colleagues in a variety of educational opportunities that facilitate the sharing of insights and leading practices. You’ll hear from innovators investing in the promising ideas, technologies and scientific discoveries that are changing the consumer experience and reimagining care deliveryLeading Health CareDiscover inspiration and practical strategies to sustain transformation within your organization, system and community as we prepare for the future. Dive into real-world applications and connect with leaders who share your commitment to driving transformative change in health care.<a class="btn btn-wide btn-primary" href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/" target="_blank" title="2025 AHA Leadership Summit" data-view-context="top-level-view">LEARN MORE &gt;&gt;</a><h2>AHA Members – Interested in receiving complimentary registration? Consider our Hosted Buyer Forum to connect with high-quality solutions providers.</h2><a href="/hosted-buyer" target="_blank">Hosted Buyer Forum</a> - Sunday, July 22 | 9:00 AM-12:00 PM and 2:30 PM-5:30 PM The Hosted Buyer Forum offers a private showcase for hospital and health system leaders interested in connecting with solution providers addressing key hospital issues. After the Forum is complete, participants are encouraged to join the Welcome Reception for additional networking.<a class="btn btn-wide btn-primary" href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/hosted-buyer" target="_blank" title="2025 AHA Leadership Summit Sponsorship" data-view-context="top-level-view">LEARN MORE &gt;&gt;</a><hr>Call for Speakers</h2> We’re calling on leaders shaping the future of health care to apply to share their real-world strategies and proven solutions with peers across the field. Whether you're tackling workforce challenges, transforming care delivery or driving operational excellence, we want to hear from you. Proposals must be non-commercial in nature. The Call for Speakers deadline is Monday, November 25. <a class="btn btn-wide btn-primary" data-view-context="top-level-view" href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/program/speaking-opportunities-ls" target="_blank">LEARN MORE &gt;&gt;</a> <a class="btn btn-wide btn-primary" data-view-context="top-level-view" href="https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/385d7c8476204286b3b500744d75dfe6" target="_blank" title="AHA Leadership Summit Call for Proposals - Apply Today!">APPLY TODAY &gt;&gt;</a> <div class="RuralButton"><a class="btn btn-primary btn-primary-avc1" href="https://www.cvent.com/c/abstracts/c8eaf006-bb32-489c-8d5e-515f82937464" target="_blank">APPLY TODAY &gt;&gt; </a></div> --&gt;<h2>Sponsorship Opportunities</h2>A variety of sponsorship opportunities offer both broad exposure and targeted connections with senior health care executives. Support the entire event, design and deliver a session that features your own executive leadership or gain visibility through numerous other opportunities.Participation by the business community in the Leadership Summit is reserved for Summit sponsors and AHA Associates.Learn how your organization can align with hospital and health system leaders as they meet to reimagine the future.<a class="btn btn-wide btn-primary" href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/sponsor-exhibit/sponsorship-ls" target="_blank" title="2025 AHA Leadership Summit Sponsorship" data-view-context="top-level-view">LEARN MORE &gt;&gt;</a> Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:15:30 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Questions Board Members Should Be Asking to Address Vulnerabilities /advancing-health-podcast/2024-10-23-questions-board-members-should-be-asking-address-vulnerabilities Hospital and health system boards are always looking to solve the most pressing challenges in health care. Asking the right questions and providing proper guidance can help establish plans to combat these issues. In this conversation, James Liggins, Jr., senior counsel at Warner Norcross + Judd, and vice chair of the board of directors at Bronson Healthcare, discusses his work developing a tool for board members that allows them to effectively understand and address areas of concern for their organizations.<hr><div></div>&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><details class="transcript"><summary> <h2 title="Click here to open/close the transcript.">View Transcript &nbsp;</h2> </summary> 00:00:00:19 - 00:00:33:14 Tom Haederle Issues that continue to affect the entire health care field, such as cybersecurity, workforce and the lingering effects of the pandemic, are areas of vulnerability for most organizations. Their boards can help by asking the right questions and providing the guidance that helps hospitals and health systems develop effective plans to deal with these challenges. And now, boards themselves could get a little help with this important task. 00:00:33:17 - 00:01:00:18 Tom Haederle Welcome to Advancing Health, a podcast from the �� Association. I'm Tom Haederle with AHA Communications. Today we hear from James Liggins, an experienced board member with Bronson Healthcare in Michigan. In this podcast hosted by Nikhil Baviskar, the AHA's program manager for trustee services, Liggins describes his work on a tool board members can use to help their organizations thrive in this complex and challenging era for health care. 00:01:00:20 - 00:01:19:04 Nikhil Baviskar Hi James, great to see you here at the 2024 AHA Leadership Summit. Can you tell me a little bit about your organization as well as your board, specifically the composition, the history? And I would be remiss if I didn't ask about your involvement with our AHA Committee on Governance as well. 00:01:19:06 - 00:01:44:18 James Liggins, Jr. Absolutely. So my name is James Liggins, I am the incoming board chair, actually, for my organization, which is Bronson Healthcare Group. It's located in Michigan. It is a four-hospital system, almost five hospitals now. We just brought in a behavioral health hospital as well. Maybe about 9000 employees, the largest employee in the area. So it's headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan. 00:01:44:21 - 00:02:04:00 James Liggins, Jr. And then we pretty much are southwest Michigan as our region as a nine-region area. And I am the incoming chair, and I've been there for, I've been on the board there for about eight years now. I'm also a commercial litigator by trade, so I do business-to-business kind of litigation. The firm that I work for is called Warner Norcross + Judd. 00:02:04:02 - 00:02:33:11 James Liggins, Jr. And then with respect to the �� Association, I am a Committee on Governance member, and I've been a member for several years now. And the incoming chair for that committee as well. And that is really one of the highlights of my career with respect to board work, because it's a different type of committee and it's the flow is a little bit different than I'm used to, but I'm really enjoying the impact that it seems like it has over the entire health care industry and hospitals in general. 00:02:33:13 - 00:02:58:23 Nikhil Baviskar Appreciate that and thank you for the shout out. We love having our COG members involved with so much of what we do. Specifically, you know, referring to the AHA, I wanted to next question ask you about the AHA Next Generation Leaders Fellow. So this is a program that you are expected to develop a project. And one of the reasons we have you here today is to explain that project as it is something that seems interesting for lots of people. 00:02:58:29 - 00:03:36:27 James Liggins, Jr. Well, sure. So the Next Generation Leaders Fellowship is, I think I'm a little bit of a unicorn with it because it's normally for those who are kind of up and coming executives headed towards the C-suite kind of level in operations of hospitals. But since I'm actually a board member as opposed to operationally speaking, it's been very interesting. And the focus of what I really wanted to get out of it was the operational side of the health care industry as a whole, and the project that I've decided to focus on is actually kind of near and dear to my heart as a board member, because it really kind of stemmed from some of the dynamics that we 00:03:36:27 - 00:04:07:27 James Liggins, Jr. received or experience as an industry from Covid, as well as now we're seeing some of the cybersecurity issues that, not some of them, a lot of them, and even CrowdStrike that just kind of impacted the airline industry and others. It really kind of started to concern me as a board member about those areas of vulnerability with organizations that, should they fail and we not have redundancies in those fields or in those areas, we could have catastrophic kind of impact for the organizations. 00:04:07:27 - 00:04:39:12 James Liggins, Jr. And so my project was focused on the board side of this. How do we develop a tool that helps the board to ask the right questions, to make sure that our organizations are addressing areas of those types of vulnerabilities? They're called single points of failure, and it really comes from the technical side or technology side with the idea that if you have an app or you have a server that potentially if that's your only non-redundant system and it fails, then you're in trouble. 00:04:39:12 - 00:05:05:27 James Liggins, Jr. And so, but that's organizationally-wise it can be applied throughout every industry. And so my thought was how do we apply that to the health care industry. And particularly from the board level. How do we develop a tool. And this is really interesting, how do you develop a tool that doesn't poke too far into operations as a board, but also allows you to do your due diligence to ask and inquire for the questions that the board members should be asking. 00:05:06:00 - 00:05:16:25 James Liggins, Jr. And so that's been my project, is develop that type of tool, and it's been a wonderful process. And fortunately I have a organization that was really behind the idea of trying to help me to develop it as well. 00:05:16:27 - 00:05:35:11 Nikhil Baviskar That is awesome. In a word. I think it's really great that you are looking at this from a board member’s perspective, because we don't usually see that. And I think calling yourself a unicorn is helpful as well, because it shows us that the board member does have a unique perspective on all of this. So the board tool sounds amazing. 00:05:35:11 - 00:05:38:27 Nikhil Baviskar Can you tell me how it would work in practice and potentially give us an example? 00:05:38:28 - 00:05:58:21 James Liggins, Jr. Sure. So in practice, the way it works is what you really want to do is work with your executive team. So to develop questions that kind of are focused on things like, so a single point of failure could be a person, you know, it could be a position, maybe a position that we don't have a succession plan for, we don't have. 00:05:58:25 - 00:06:19:27 James Liggins, Jr. But if we lost that person, the system could come to a halt. It could be very catastrophic for us. It could be a vendor that is a single point of produce or production or service for the organization that we don't have backups for. It could be someone or a knowledge or a skillset, that if that skillset goes away, the organization as a whole is in trouble. 00:06:20:03 - 00:06:40:25 James Liggins, Jr. And so what we develop was a, so you work with your team, and the reason why you have to work with your executives is because you really want to counteract and mitigate the defense, the automatic defensiveness that people might have when you start talking about areas within their responsibility, right? That at the end of the day, may look or reflect bad on them. 00:06:40:27 - 00:06:54:24 James Liggins, Jr. So you really have to work to bring them into the process right from the beginning and help them to understand that this is going to be anonymous. The goal is not to single point anyone out. The goal is to make sure that the organization as a whole is as healthy as it can be. 00:06:54:27 - 00:06:57:08 Nikhil Baviskar Have you been able to test this out as of yet? 00:06:57:13 - 00:07:19:23 James Liggins, Jr. So I have the survey. We are working on implementation right now. And so the goal is by fourth quarter to implement it at Bronson. Yeah. And the cool thing is I'll just be moving into the board chair role. So I'll have some legitimacy and pushing this out to the organization as a whole. Because just as a regular board member, I'm not sure I'd be able to get it pushed. 00:07:19:23 - 00:07:29:18 Nikhil Baviskar Well legitimacy matters, yeah, legitimacy matters. Well, James, thank you so much for your time today. I can't wait to follow up with you and find out how this works out. 00:07:29:18 - 00:07:46:08 James Liggins, Jr. And one last thing I'll say, Nikhil, is on the Committee on Governance. You know, the goal is hopefully after I've had a year of implementation to talk to our committee about it as well and just let the committee members know what we're doing, they may decide that it's something that they may have interest in as well. And our members as well. 00:07:46:10 - 00:07:53:27 Nikhil Baviskar We are at the Innovation Hub at the Leadership Summit. So perfect idea. So thank you again, James, for your time and we'll talk to you later. 00:07:53:27 - 00:07:56:02 James Liggins, Jr. Nikhil, I appreciate the opportunity. 00:07:56:04 - 00:08:04:15 Tom Haederle Thanks for listening to Advancing Health. Please subscribe and rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. </details></div> &nbsp; Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:44:21 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Reminder: AHA’s Governance Survey closes mid-November /news/headline/2024-10-17-reminder-ahas-governance-survey-closes-mid-november AHA-member and non-member CEOs are being reminded to complete the AHA’s 2024 Governance Survey by mid-November. The survey, sent via email Aug. 20, Sept. 3, Sept. 16 and Oct. 2, provides a profile of the changing landscape of governance in America’s hospitals and health systems. It will benchmark current board structure, practices and culture with previous AHA governance surveys and highlight best practices in the evolving environment. The AHA will produce a report in 2025 highlighting the results of the survey. If you did not receive the survey and want to complete it, please email <a href="mailto: surveysupport@aha.org">surveysupport@aha.org</a>.&nbsp; Fri, 18 Oct 2024 16:05:37 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity AHA’s 2024 Governance Survey for CEOs now available /news/headline/2024-09-17-ahas-2024-governance-survey-ceos-now-available The AHA’s 2024 Governance Survey is now available for AHA-member and non-member CEOs to complete. The survey was initially emailed to CEOs Aug. 20 and a second message will be distributed in October. The survey provides a profile of the changing governance landscape in America’s hospitals and health systems. The survey will benchmark current board structure, practices and culture with previous AHA governance surveys and highlight best practices in the evolving environment. &nbsp;A report highlighting the results will be released in 2025 which will include governance trends. The survey will close in mid-November. Email <a href="mailto:trustees@aha.org" target="_blank">trustees@aha.org</a> for additional information. Tue, 17 Sep 2024 15:29:19 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Building Board Readiness for Health Equity /node/694283 Advancing health equity requires that your board of trustees align on the key efforts required to align policies, resources and programs. This survey on Board Readiness for Health Equity can be completed by trustees to establish a sense of how the Board views health equity in four key areas of focus:<ol><li>Establishing a Board culture that values diversity, inclusive leadership, and health equity;</li><li>Creating Board accountability for health equity;</li><li>Reviewing key metrics on health equity to inform the Board; and</li></ol>This survey was previously published by the AHA Trustee Services. See: <a href="https://trustees.aha.org/board-diversity-survey-advance-health-equity" title="AHA Trustee Services: Building Board Readiness for Health Equity">https://trustees.aha.org/board-diversity-survey-advance-health-equity</a>. Wed, 10 Jul 2024 13:53:48 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity It Starts at the Top: How Boards Can Prioritize Health Equity /node/694282 Ensuring equitable access to quality care is part of the responsibility of hospital and health system boards to serve their communities. boards should be clear on the definition for health equity in their organizations. a board can create a health equity committee or hold health equity discussions in an existing committee such as quality or governance. The board should ensure there is a strategy to develop and strengthen community partnerships. Wed, 10 Jul 2024 13:44:33 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Supporting Hospital and Health System Boards as We Navigate a Changing Health Care Landscape /news/perspective/2024-05-17-supporting-hospital-and-health-system-boards-we-navigate-changing-health-care-landscape The many complexities of health care today continue to challenge hospital and health system governing boards to ensure that high-quality patient care is provided to the communities they serve.Nowadays, boards need to bring much more than traditional oversight of finances, quality and patient care. Board members must be knowledgeable across a wide variety of health care topics and issues (some further their learning by rounding with clinicians), as well as community bridge-builders who can forge coalitions to advance health.The past few years have wrought profound changes, expanding the board’s role in hospital and health system oversight as never before.For one thing, the accountability of boards has substantially increased. Today, board members find themselves confronted with multi-faceted challenges such as workforce shortages, a rise in behavioral and mental health issues that impact their communities and workforce, not to mention the ever-present threat of cyberattacks and the expanding role of artificial intelligence.Successfully engaging with these issues requires not only a thorough understanding of them, but the ability to create workable strategies and solutions to support their hospitals and health systems to continue to provide high-quality care for their patients and communities.Today’s risks have become more significant than in the past. For example, it is important for hospitals and health systems to have a cybersecurity plan in place and for boards to understand what the plan is, what the risks are and what the plan will be going forward.And because risk oversight has become increasingly important to organizational sustainability, boards also need to create an enterprise risk management (ERM) discipline that supports the identification, assessment and management of risks. This helps boards to function as effective stewards and fiduciaries and focus on the issues critical to creating greater value for their organizations and stakeholders.At the same time, boards also should be looking at their structure to ensure they are diverse in representing their community’s needs. Diversity not only means race and ethnicity, but age, expertise and skill set. A diverse board is a strong board, one that can have robust discussion about the issues impacting their hospitals and health systems.Service as a board member today can be demanding, but the opportunity to guide, advise and support the health care organizations that are cornerstones of our communities is immensely rewarding.The AHA supports good governance by offering education and resources on governance practices and our field’s emerging challenges that are crucial to advancing health in every community across the country. <a href="https://trustees.aha.org/" target="_blank" title="AHA Trustee Services homepage">AHA’s Trustee Services</a> serves as the hub for a broad array of efforts to help hospitals and their boards navigate the transforming health care landscape.In addition, several of AHA’s key meetings have sessions or educational tracks designed for trustees. For example, at July’s <a href="https://leadershipsummit.aha.org/" target="_blank" title="2024 AHA Leadership Summit homepage">AHA Leadership Summit</a> in San Diego, trustees will have opportunities to enhance their understanding of emerging issues in governance and learn to apply new models and practices.Good governance helps ensure quality care for patients and families; fosters safe, positive environments for health care teams; and ultimately helps create healthier communities.Thanks to all the community leaders who serve on hospital and health system boards across the country. Please use our <a href="https://trustees.aha.org/" target="_blank" title="AHA Trustee Services homepage">trustee resources</a> as additional insight and tools so we can continue our work together to advance health in America. Fri, 17 May 2024 08:38:03 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Chair File: Leadership Dialogue — The Dynamic Work of Hospital and Health System Boards with Greg Bentz, Board Chair of Saint Luke’s Health System /news/chairpersons-file/2023-09-25-chair-file-leadership-dialogue-dynamic-work-hospital-and-health-system-boards-greg-bentz On today’s episode, I talk with Greg Bentz, board chair of Saint Luke’s Health System, based in Kansas City, Mo., and chair of the AHA Committee on Governance. We discuss the important role and dynamic work of boards of trustees as hospitals and health systems navigate tremendous challenges after the pandemic. Saint Luke’s has focused on and invested in “our people and technology” the past few years to “maintain the quality of our care and improve and reshape the efficiency” of care delivery, Greg explains. “[The board] listened carefully to what our team has been living through these past few years and tried to provide support for them, both technologically and with programs that would provide them with mental and physical support,” he says. The health system also has expanded digital care as part of its investment in technology, which has been well received by patients. Greg discusses the “intentionality” it takes for hospitals and health systems to develop a diverse board, which has become a higher priority. He also explains how the Saint Luke’s Health System board and the subsidiary boards in the system work together to ensure all community voices are heard. Board members are “great messengers” in telling the hospital story, to share the financial, health care and social contributions that hospitals and health systems provide to communities, Greg emphasizes. I hope you find these conversations interesting and insightful. Look for them once a month as part of the Chair File. Watch the episode. <hr /> <div><a href="https://soundcloud.com/advancinghealth" target="_blank" title="Advancing Health">Advancing Health</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/advancinghealth/leadership-dialogue-series-the-dynamic-work-of-boards-with-sain-lukes-health-system" target="_blank" title="Leadership Dialogue Series: The Dynamic Work of Boards With Saint Luke’s Health System">Leadership Dialogue Series: The Dynamic Work of Boards With Saint Luke’s Health System</a></div> &nbsp; Mon, 25 Sep 2023 21:12:50 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity Leadership Dialogue Series: The Dynamic Work of Boards With Saint Luke’s Health System /advancing-health-podcast/2023-09-25-leadership-dialogue-series-dynamic-work-boards-saint-lukes-health-system The many pressures squeezing health care providers have all served to make the role of hospital trustees, or governing board members, more important than ever. These boards have been charged with making sure that quality metrics are met and that strategic priorities guide the missions. In this conversation, John Haupert, president and CEO of Grady Health System and the 2023 Chair of AHA’s Board, and Greg Bentz, board chair of Saint Luke's Health and chair of AHA's Committee on Governance, discuss the thin margin of error that hospitals and health systems are facing, and how Saint Luke's is focusing on governance to help achieve the highest levels of excellence in providing health care. <hr /> <div><a href="https://soundcloud.com/advancinghealth" target="_blank" title="Advancing Health">Advancing Health</a> · <a href="https://soundcloud.com/advancinghealth/leadership-dialogue-series-the-dynamic-work-of-boards-with-sain-lukes-health-system" target="_blank" title="Leadership Dialogue Series: The Dynamic Work of Boards With Saint Luke’s Health System">Leadership Dialogue Series: The Dynamic Work of Boards With Saint Luke’s Health System</a></div> &nbsp; <details class="transcript"><summary> <h2 title="Click here to open/close the transcript.">View Transcript &nbsp;</h2> </summary> 00;00;00;25 - 00;00;31;29 Tom Haederle Hospitals and health systems have navigated some pretty choppy waters over the past several years. Most are not anchored in a safe harbor even now. The many pressures squeezing health care providers - finances, workforce retention, supply chain issues - have all served to make the role of hospital trustee or governing board member more challenging than ever. Hospital boards have accurately been described as the North Saintar in hospital operations, charged with making sure that quality metrics are met and that strategic priorities guide the mission. 00;00;32;02 - 00;01;11;25 Tom Haederle Not an easy lift. But it is doable. Welcome to Advancing Health, a podcast from the �� Association. I'm Tom Haederle with AHA Communications. On this leadership dialog series podcast, John Haupert, AHA’s board chair and president and CEO of Grady Health, is in dialog with Greg Bentz, board chair of Saint Luke's Health System in Kansas City, Missouri, and also the current chair of AHA’s Committee on Governance. 00;01;11;28 - 00;01;34;16 Tom Haederle Saint Luke's Health System is big. It includes 14 hospitals and campuses across the Kansas City region and offers home care, hospice and behavioral health care, dozens of physician practices, a life care senior living community and more. Providing effective board oversight is a daily challenge and as Bentz says "it feels like the past three years have been a pretty intense time in the governance world. 00;01;34;23 - 00;01;42;07 Tom Haederle The margin of error feels like it's pretty thin, so we focused our efforts very intently on governance." 00;01;42;09 - 00;02;30;26 John Haupert Good afternoon and thank you everyone for joining me today for another leadership dialog session. I'm John Haupert, president and CEO of Grady Health System in Atlanta and board chair of the �� Association. I am looking forward to our conversation today as we take a look at the important role of hospital and health system governance. Hospital trustees have been an important part and do an important job as they work to foster a positive and productive culture within their organization, ensure their hospitals are meeting high quality and patient focused performance metrics and act as a North Saintar in always ensuring that strategic priorities guide the mission by providing needed medical care, as well as supporting the broader 00;02;30;26 - 00;02;58;02 John Haupert health and wellness of the communities they serve. Here at Grady, it's been fun to see the evolution of our board of directors. It's a 17-member board, so it's manageable. It meets quarterly, which I think is appropriate. But as many hospital boards experience, oftentimes the board members are already very familiar with things like financial acumen and the performance on customer service. 00;02;58;04 - 00;03;20;17 John Haupert But sometimes they struggle to understand what is good quality and what does quality mean. So we've invested a lot of time in educating our board around where we are, where we're positioned and providing high quality care. But what should the goal be and what does that look like? And so for us, that's been a big focus. So today I want to introduce Greg Bentz. 00;03;20;18 - 00;04;01;22 John Haupert Greg spent his days as a trial attorney with Wallace Saunders in Overland Park, Kansas, but he is here with us today in a different capacity, and that is as chair of Saint Luke's Health System, board of directors. The Saint Luke's Health System is a fully integrated regional health system with about 13,000 employees based in Missouri and Kansas. The health system has 13 hospitals ranging from a large tertiary hospital in the middle of Kansas City to metro hospitals outside the city to critical access hospitals, as well as a children's behavioral health hospital and a rehabilitation hospital. 00;04;01;27 - 00;04;30;04 John Haupert I will say serving as the chair of that board really is extensive, given the broad range of types of facilities that are being served by Saint Luke's. Greg first started his service to Saint Luke's by serving on the board of one of their individual hospitals before being elected to the system Board and becoming chair in 2022. Additionally, Greg also serves as the chair of AHA's Committee on Governance. 00;04;30;07 - 00;04;34;26 John Haupert So Greg, thank you for joining me today. And we're going to jump in with our first question. 00;04;34;29 - 00;04;36;19 Greg Bentz Thank you, John. 00;04;36;22 - 00;04;55;04 John Haupert It goes without saying that hospitals and health systems have faced some tremendous and I mean tremendous challenges these past few years with the pandemic and then grappling with the significant financial pressures that followed. What has that looked like from a governance perspective at Saint Luke's? 00;04;55;06 - 00;05;26;11 Greg Bentz As we tried to move through COVID and past it, whether we'll ever really be past it remains to be seen. But we really focused everything we were doing on trying to invest in those things that would help us maintain the quality of our care and improve and reshape the efficiency with which we provided that care. It feels like the last three years have been a pretty intense time in the governance world. 00;05;26;14 - 00;06;04;03 Greg Bentz The margin of error feels like it's pretty thin, and so we've really focused our efforts very intently on governance. Really we've invested primarily in our people and technology. You know, we've had a situation where health care's lost half a million workers in the last few years through burnout and retirement, illness and even sometimes death. And so it's really been critical that we focused on employee retention. 00;06;04;06 - 00;06;35;28 Greg Bentz We made sure that we tried to keep our team together. We felt like if we could do that, we would be ahead of the game. We've invested a lot of time and effort in retention. We've listened carefully to what our team has been living through these past few years and tried to provide support for them, both technologically and with programs that would provide them both physical and mental support. 00;06;36;01 - 00;07;15;06 Greg Bentz We've expanded our digital care as part of our investment in technology and that's been very well received by our patients. And so we've really tried to stay with our culture and be transparent with our patients and with the physicians as we try and govern during what the last few years has been a very challenging time. One thing we did change is we went a lot more virtual in our meetings with our boards, and we certainly needed to improve our technology related to that type of access for the board members. 00;07;15;09 - 00;07;36;08 Greg Bentz As I mentioned, we made significant investments in digital care and also Hospital in Your Home, which is a program that is technologically intensive but has been very well received by the patients and more and more people are signing up for that type of program. 00;07;36;11 - 00;08;02;13 John Haupert Great. Thank you. That was very good information and I appreciate that greatly. You're a great person to have answering these questions because you served on both a hospital specific board, but then on the broader health system. Which really I know is two different perspectives. In your experience so far and in both of those roles, have you seen changes in the structure or makeup of boards or focus of boards over time? 00;08;02;16 - 00;08;30;17 Greg Bentz I sure have, John. I think there's been a big shift to the intentionality that it takes to develop a diverse board. I think that has become a higher and higher priority for boards and it's something we should all strive to do. The statistics, though, are still not fabulous. The AHA did a governance survey recently and the results of that are improving. 00;08;30;17 - 00;09;10;26 Greg Bentz But we still have a situation where over 60% of the board members are over age 50. 80% of them are white and 65% of them are male. But those numbers are all better than they were five years ago. We have started using more out (?). At Saint Luke's we haven't done this, but nationally, more and more boards are reaching out to people from beyond their geographic region and bringing them on to boards to try and bring in diverse views and views that are not necessarily limited by parochial concerns. 00;09;10;29 - 00;09;42;00 Greg Bentz One other area that is interesting to me is that nurses have been kind of overlooked as potential board members, and we found that having nurses who have their feet on the carpet of the hospital rooms are a great source of information for a board. As you mentioned, we've got a very diverse set of hospitals and delivery systems throughout a large geographic area. 00;09;42;03 - 00;10;11;27 Greg Bentz And so trying to build a diverse board takes a lot of effort. It takes building relationships and sometimes you have to go out of your comfort zone to do that. But we think it's very important to kind of rebalance the table and make sure that all the communities we serve have a voice on the board so that we can be aware of their concerns and their needs so we can try and serve those as best we can. 00;10;11;29 - 00;10;41;13 Greg Bentz There's been a effort to build a what we call leadership pipeline so that we can bring people in and educate them about the health system even prior to them being on the board. And then, of course, once they're on the board orientation is critical. There's been a big focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in governance recently, and that's something everybody needs to spend time thinking about. 00;10;41;20 - 00;11;14;23 Greg Bentz And we do that. Workforce, as you mentioned, quality. I love the true North Saintar. That's a term I use a lot because I really believe that. But we've also been focused on workforce and trying to make sure that their needs are being met. And I actually noticed, or I've recently read some AHA Trustee Services board briefs that were very good on workforce, including physical safety, but also behavioral health support. 00;11;14;26 - 00;11;54;01 John Haupert You brought up some really great points. And one of the ones that I have thought about often is bringing in someone from beyond your borders. And we did that here at Grady so that we could assure the board that the direction we were heading in from a quality and equity point of view was on target. And so we went outside our market and brought in a chief quality officer from another health system who's really well known to both support us and provide input, but also to assure the board from their position on our quality committee that we were headed in the right direction. 00;11;54;01 - 00;12;20;28 John Haupert So I'm glad to hear that you see that as a priority. Now, this next one I know has received a little criticism, but we are increasingly hearing criticism of health systems or large health systems with multiple hospitals. And some of the naysayers are saying health systems are not in tune with the needs of the individual communities where they have all of these facilities. 00;12;21;00 - 00;12;39;05 John Haupert So can you share your insights on how at Saint Luke's and as chair of that board, how are you all balance seeing that system oversight along with assuring that the voice of those very different communities that you serve are heard? 00;12;39;08 - 00;13;14;24 Greg Bentz It's always a challenge. We've got a system board similar in size to yours with 15 members, but there are also 15 subsidiary boards that are at the entity level. I've been, as you mentioned, on several of those boards. I started on what we call the Plaza Board, which is our tertiary quaternary hospital in the center of Kansas City and served on that board for a while, was also during that time period on the South Board, which is a suburban hospital, and had the opportunity to serve as chair on that. 00;13;14;26 - 00;13;42;21 Greg Bentz And now, of course, the system board. Five years ago we reorganized our system structure in a drive toward a higher level of systemization, and we've been successful with that and it's been a very strong and positive thing for us. But one of the decisions we made while we were doing that was to retain all of our subsidiary boards. 00;13;42;23 - 00;14;23;07 Greg Bentz And we felt very strongly that those subsidiary boards provide a great amount of information and advocacy and potentially philanthropy that we really could not go without. So we retain those boards. We think it's important to get tuned in to them and to hear the voice of the communities that we serve. They play a critical role in that. But we also get an opportunity to educate them about what's going on at the national level through AHA information. 00;14;23;13 - 00;14;47;20 Greg Bentz As you know, Mindy Estes, our CEO, was a chair as you are now, and it was a great source of information for all of us at the system and that the entity levels. We need to explain to them how Saint Luke's fits into the solutions that are necessary for the community and how each entity also fits into those solutions. 00;14;47;22 - 00;15;21;22 Greg Bentz You know, local boards tend to focus on quality credentialing, financial, local issues, advocacy, those are all super important and they have to share that information with the system so we can build it in. The system boards are faced with a difficult task, and that is prioritization of decisions.And the system board has to take that all in and use it to make these hard allocation issues. 00;15;21;24 - 00;15;53;10 Greg Bentz And, you know, being part of a system includes the possibility that a decision will not be the best one for an individual hospital, but it is the best one for the system overall. And those are hard decisions, but they're decisions that have to be made at the system level. And we think that it's important for the good of the entire system that they're made with the input from the individual hospitals. 00;15;53;13 - 00;16;15;07 John Haupert Well, Greg, I really appreciate your answer to that question, because it sounds to me as if Saint Luke's and knowing Mindy and now having met you, you all have done this the right way by maintaining that open communication channel between all of the different entities that fold up under the Saint Luke's umbrella and getting that input from the communities. 00;16;15;07 - 00;16;46;27 John Haupert And the reality is allocation of resources at a system level is one of the key roles that a system board plays. And so the way you describe that to me really sounds like you all have that one under control and doing well with that. Kind of tying into that, what role do you think board members can play in reputation management for a health system &nbsp;- serving, as you said - as advocates, being a voice in the community, telling the hospital's story. 00;16;47;00 - 00;16;49;12 John Haupert What does that look like at Saint Luke's? 00;16;49;14 - 00;17;19;13 Greg Bentz Yeah, sure, John. We feel like our board members, not only at the system but at all of the entity levels, are our greatest advocates. They are a great source of credibility in the community. They have the ability to go out and explain the how and why of what's going on at the hospital to the community. They also internally provide information to our medical staff. 00;17;19;15 - 00;17;50;11 Greg Bentz The medical staff is really almost like a community unto itself, and we certainly have doctors who are on our boards so that they can share and educate their colleagues about what's happening at the health system and the individual hospitals and why. They kind of act as educators. All of our board members act as educators in the community and a great source of feedback from the community, which we think is very important. 00;17;50;13 - 00;18;29;28 Greg Bentz We need to arm our trustees with talking points to let them know what's going on, what information is important for us to share with the community, what information we're looking to get back from the community. The AHA's Seizing the Conversation process is a great example of that. Wonderful program. Actually, the trustee insight piece that goes out monthly in June had a very nice piece on board advocacy and the proper use of board members and advocacy in the community. 00;18;30;00 - 00;18;56;07 Greg Bentz John, many hospitals are making significant community contributions, but their stories aren't always effectively being told or fully understood. And trustees can do a great job telling the story about what a hospital is doing in the community, its financial contribution, its health care contribution, its social contribution. 00;18;56;10 - 00;19;24;25 John Haupert Well, that's music to my ears, by the way, because as you know, as chair of the AHA, one of our biggest priorities is getting the true and real story out into the community. As of late, there's been a little bit of hospital and health system bashing, and I think the AHA is doing an incredible job of arming hospitals and health system staff within our facilities with the right information then to go forth and share. 00;19;24;28 - 00;19;50;02 John Haupert And I'm really pleased to hear you talk that you all are doing that throughout your system. That's just great work. So earlier on, you shared some pretty innovative things with us. Like Hospital at Home and expansion of your digital platform that's already happening at Saint Luke's. But when you look beyond that, are there some innovations or new care models or other things that Saint Luke's Board is focusing on? 00;19;50;05 - 00;20;20;20 Greg Bentz We are, John. We actually have been working very diligently the last two years on reimagining and reinventing our care model. We realized that the care model was 30, 40, 50 years old and that it really needed a very strong analysis of the pros and cons of it. We worked hard to try and get nurses to be doing the work that they trained for, to be practicing at the top of their license. 00;20;20;23 - 00;20;47;13 Greg Bentz We found, as we did an analysis of nursing at Saint Luke's, we found that nurses were spending what I would call it inordinate amount of time taking menu selections down, ordering food for patients. That's certainly something that you don't need a nursing degree to do. And so we've gone about hiring additional staff, which is a challenge right now. 00;20;47;13 - 00;21;30;25 Greg Bentz But trying to remove the burdens that are unnecessarily placed on our nursing staff so that they can spend their time providing health care to the patient rather than doing what I would call more ministerial jobs. One interesting thing that we've tried and it's only been recently is we've actually purchased some robots and we have these robots and they're trained to travel back and forth from the nursing station to the pharmacy so they can go and get the medications and bring them back to the nursing station so the nurses don't have to leave the floor to do that. 00;21;30;28 - 00;21;59;01 Greg Bentz And not only is it kind of fun to see a robot puttering around the halls, but it we found it's relieved our nurses of time that they can now spend with the patient in a meaningful way. So looking forward, we also are in the middle of the discussion with BJC Healthcare in Saint Louis about joining forces and becoming an integrated health system with them. 00;21;59;04 - 00;22;31;21 Greg Bentz We have not received regulatory approval yet, but we hope that joinder can occur by the end of the year. And that would give us a large presence on both the west side and the east side of the state of Missouri and in Kansas and Illinois. So we're very excited about that and we hope that that'll go forward. And that will then, of course, cause us to spend a significant amount of time working on integrating the two health systems to become one efficient unit. 00;22;31;24 - 00;22;57;09 Greg Bentz And then, as you know, I believe our fearless leader, Dr. Estes, is going to take a well-deserved retirement. That's a major issue for us. I mean, Mindy has done unbelievable things from Saint Luke's and as well for the AHA, and I know we're both going to miss her as far as her being retired from us. We're immensely grateful to her 00;22;57;09 - 00;23;14;22 Greg Bentz and I think the AHA feels the same way. But we're going to have to come up with somebody that can try and fill her ample size shoes. And so those are kind of the biggest things that we're focused on for the coming year or so. 00;23;14;24 - 00;23;42;06 John Haupert Yeah, Thanks, Greg. That's really great. The comments about looking at the care model and care model redesign is so critical and we have a committee on workforce that's doing some fantastic work and all throughout the pandemic was getting information out available to us in the field, even regionally, about workforce issues, best practices. They, too, are going to be moving into this 00;23;42;09 - 00;24;14;17 John Haupert look at how do we redesign the care model to get nurses at the bedside and get them away from doing tasks they don't need to do like you have already brought up. So as you all work through that, I know with Mindy and you, you'll share that great work with us at the AHA and that can really become part of our research we're doing around defining what these models could be, because I know there'll be different models for different types of facilities, but I couldn't agree with you more about needing to revolutionize that model. 00;24;14;17 - 00;24;19;09 John Haupert We are sitting on a 40 and 50 year old model and that has to be very different. 00;24;19;11 - 00;24;27;02 Greg Bentz We'll be pleased, John, to share anything we've come up with or we've had some good findings and good results. So we'll be happy to bring that to the table. 00;24;27;04 - 00;24;51;22 John Haupert Great. I really appreciate that. I appreciate you sharing the great work you're doing at Saint Luke's, as well as your insights into the important role that hospitals and health systems can play in both positioning organizations for success and also in helping to communicate the tremendous value that hospitals and health systems provide to their communities. Until next time, thank you to everyone for joining us today. 00;24;51;25 - 00;24;56;06 John Haupert I hope you'll be back next month for our next Leadership Dialog. Thank you. </details> Mon, 25 Sep 2023 08:59:56 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity AHA podcast: Creating a Support System for Black Women Leaders and CEOs /news/headline/2023-06-23-aha-podcast-creating-support-system-black-women-leaders-and-ceos In 2022, the AHA launched the Black Women CEO Roundtable to create a support system and facilitate meaningful connections. Roundtable member Asha Rodriguez, vice president, facility executive with Atrium Health Cabarrus, reflects on how the roundtable’s support, encouragement and honest dialogue have helped her bond with her fellow CEOs. <a href="/advancing-health-podcast/2023-06-23-creating-support-system-black-women-leaders-and-ceos">LISTEN NOW</a> Fri, 23 Jun 2023 13:33:49 -0500 Governance and Leadership Diversity