One of the highlights of this crazy year for me has been producing and hosting a podcast for Modern Healthcare called Next Up. It’s a twice-monthly podcast for emerging healthcare executives.
Next Up came right on time — a year in which healthcare has been on the front and center of everyone’s mind. I was able to talk to several of our nation’s healthcare leaders about diversity in healthcare leadership, how to actually lead, and of course, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Next Up’s 3 Most Popular Episodes
- Dealing with Two Crises: COVID-19 and Civil Unrest with Dr. Carladenise Edwards
- You Said What? How Women Healthcare Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively with Dr. Joanne Conroy
- Gender Equity During COVID-19 with Dr. Rosemary Morgan
Here are 10 key takeaways from Modern Healthcare’s Next Up during 2020.
1. On the implications of lacking female representation in healthcare leadership:
“The percentage of women in the health workforce worldwide — it’s 75%. But women only make up 25% of the global health or health workforce decision-making roles or leadership roles, which is a huge discrepancy…So, if these task forces are all made up of men, what does that mean for [women’s] needs?”
–Dr. Rosemary Morgan, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, on Next Up’s COVID-19’s Gender Gap, May 30, 2020
2. On going beyond filling the diversity grid in healthcare leadership:
“The next step is actual inclusion, where now that you’ve brought the people into the organization or you’ve given them a seat at the table, are you taking the right steps for them to be included and to actually feel included? What you need is diversity of thought and opinion, so that you can make business decisions, clinical decisions, scientific decisions, based on the knowledge that that person is bringing to the conversation.”
–Dr. Carladenise Edwards, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Henry Ford Health System, on Next Up’s Dealing with Two Crises, June 24, 2020
3. On the power of silence:
“Women often fill up the space, but silence can actually be very powerful, even though it may feel a little uncomfortable. If you’ve said something important, a little silence after it is okay.”
–Joanne Conroy, President and CEO of Dartmouth-Hitchcock on Next Up’s You Said What? How Women Healthcare Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively, July 11, 2020
4. On how to make sure you’re considered for a C-suite role in healthcare:
“Some people have their eyes so much on the next job, they’re not really doing the current one to its full capacity. Sometimes, it’s going outside the traditional lines of the job — offering yourself for a complex project, taking on something that no one else wants to do. Those are the things that often really have people stand out.”
–Nancy Schlichting, former CEO of Henry Ford Health System, on Next Up’s Finding Your Place in Line, July 25, 2020
5. On having what it takes to move up the ranks in healthcare:
“…Get into the trenches. Walk the floors, meet the workforce, understand what are the pressures, the concerns, the highs and lows of your clinical staff. Understand the pressures and highs and lows of your non-patient-facing workforce. And start to make some determinations on where you fit in …”
–Darci Hall, Chief Learning Officer, Providence St. Joseph Health, on Next Up’s Are You Ready to Lead a Hospital?, September 5, 2020
6. On making sure you’re always growing in your healthcare career:
“I would tell myself to be more open to opportunities as they come up…I talk about self-confidence, but I always add the additional admonition — self-confidence without arrogance. We just can’t afford to move in these positions and be arrogant in them, because how will we help others coming behind us if we’re experiencing the queen bee situation?”
–Dr. Vivian Pinn, first full-time Director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health, on Next Up’s What Would I Tell My 40-Year Old Self?, September 19, 2020
7. On what it takes for hospitals to be prepared for the next pandemic:
“Don’t ever try to fix the roof when there is a storm. You fix the roof when the sun is shining… You should become unbelievably familiar with all the other parts of your organization and become not only familiar, but develop relationships with the leaders and all of the other components. Because that level of trust, and that integration of relationship, is imperative during any kind of a crisis. It’s, in fact, imperative to make sure the system actually works even in normal times.”
–Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health, on Next Up’s Leading Through a Pandemic, October 17, 2020
8. On what to anticipate in healthcare during the Biden-Harris administration:
“I think that this team has been not only monitoring, but preparing for more testing and tracing [of COVID-19], and a much clearer, singular message around the types of sensible public health measures that everyone can and should be taking. That’s the social distancing, the handwashing, the mask-wearing …”
–Ceci Connolly, President and CEO at Alliance of Community Health Plans, on Next Up’s How to Navigate the Murky Post-Election Waters, November 11, 2020 (Bonus Election Episode)
9. On possible solutions for obstacles rural healthcare organizations are facing:
“It’s been a continued goal of a lot of these standalone hospitals to try to find partners through some sort of merger or acquisition. A lot of times they have more resources and can offer better deals, higher salaries to doctors, specialists, nurses, even administrative staff. That goes a long way.”
–Alex Kacik, Hospital Operations Reporter for Modern Healthcare, on Next Up’s Saving Rural Health, November 11, 2020
10. On how healthcare systems can actually impact public health:
“It’s not about patients — it’s about populations, it’s about policy. We need to lean on healthcare for their power. Take something like asthma, and you have kids who are coming into the ER. If the reason they’re coming in is because of something in the apartment building that they live in, then there’s no clinical remedy to that. You have to actually change the environment. So, there is a real argument for healthcare putting low-interest loans on the street, to that property owner, so they can change out the HVAC. The hospital makes its money back on the loan, and all of a sudden, we resolve the issue that was driving the children into the ER with asthma.”
–Brian Castrucci, President and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, on Next Up’s COVID-19, Social Determinants Highlight Health Inequities — What Next?, November 28, 2020
Check out our latest episode with Carter Dredge, Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at SSM Health, about what aspiring leaders need to know about the role of disruption and innovation in healthcare.
