Tag Archives: leadership

Health leadership and priorities in the Biden Administration

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Over the past several weeks, we have watched as President-Elect Joe Biden has announced his cabinet nominees and other senior officials. He has done it one major area at a time. The health nominees and appointees can be found here. They are an impressive, well qualified team.

The CDC appointment may be one of the most important and consequential of all given the pandemic and how confidence in the CDC has eroded over the past year. Dr. Rochelle Walensky is ready to turn that around and I for one am both excited and optimistic. You can get a sense of who she is and how she will lead the CDC in a recent In The Bubble with Andy Slavitt interview: Meet the New CDC Director (with Rochelle Walensky).

Getting the pandemic under control is the top priority of the new administration. Biden has outlined a $1.9 trillion stimulus plan that includes more than $400 billion to fight the pandemic directly. The COVID-19 portion includes $20 billion for a national vaccine plan, launching community vaccination centers, deploying mobile vaccination units in hard-to-reach areas, $50 billion for testing expansion, funding 100,000 public health workers for vaccine outreach and contact tracing, funding for health services in underserved populations, and $10 billion for pandemic supplies.

We all know that health IT is critical to healthcare transformation. In a December 15th letter to President-Elect Joe Biden, HIMSS identified the following as key health priorities for 2021 and beyond and pledged to diligently work with Biden and his administration on the issues that require immediate action beginning in 2021. Continue reading →

January 6th reflections   

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I could not write about what happened on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol any sooner. As I have watched the images on TV the past few days and tried to process it all I wondered what I could say that would make any difference. What would a tweet, a retweet, or a like matter on social media?

I have written posts on significant events and political issues in the past – the 2016 election, Black Lives Matter movement, racial disparities in healthcare, separating families at the border, gun control, gay marriage and more. I try to come at it from a health IT perspective, somehow. I’m not sure how to do that with this one so I won’t even try.

As a leader in my profession and industry, and as someone with a social platform, I decided that I can’t be silent. What I have seen this week only strengthens my commitment to continue to lead by example and help develop the next generation of leaders who are competent, decent, caring, fair and serve with integrity. And to ensure our children know that what they saw on Wednesday was very wrong.

I had tears when I realized how bad the assault on the Capitol could have been. Contrast that to my tears of joy when the first black man was inaugurated 12 years ago on the steps of the Capitol. I remember watching President Obama’s inauguration with my colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where a large screen had been set up in one of the largest meeting rooms for employees who wanted to watch. From housekeeping staff, to nurses, to VPs – we were there, watching, and filled with hope.

I had tears of sadness in 2016 when Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump, but I accepted it. I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the divisiveness that has been perpetuated these past four years has hurt our country for years to come. I feared his re-election in 2020 and had tears of joy again on December 7 when it was clear that President Elect Joe Biden had not only won the popular vote but also the electoral college.

What happened on January 6 had been building for four years and more intensely for the last two months. Continue reading →

Developing next generation leaders 2021 style  

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In 2021, I have said yes to one more way I can help develop next generation leaders. I am excited to be one of the rotating co-hosts on This Week In Health IT Monday Newsday series. Bill Russell has done an amazing job the past three years growing and evolving This Week In Health IT into several different podcast series and channels. Bill shares my commitment to developing next generation leaders through his many different offerings, so I quickly said yes when asked to be one of the co-hosts in the new format of the Newsday series.  Our first episode together will be available January 11, so I hope you will check it out.

Bill’s commitment and goal is clear: develop the next generation of health leaders by amplifying the best thinking. This Week In Health IT has proven to be a valuable contribution to our industry. My health IT advisory firm, StarBridge Advisors, is proud to continue as a channel sponsor in 2021.

After a very successful 2020 with 230,000 downloads and 177 new episodes including the daily COVID Field Report series from March to July, Bill has changed things up yet again for 2021. There are several options to pick and choose from for yourself and to share with your teams. These offerings provide a no-cost, easy, accessible way for staying current and continuing to learn from others.

Monday Newsday – replacing the Tuesday Newsday show, every Monday Bill will have a co-host to discuss key stories in the news.

Wednesday Solutions Showcase – 2020 episodes highlighted AI, Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, End Point Security, Social Determinants of Health partnerships, Mental Health integration with primary care and more.

Friday Influencers – Interviews with industry leaders. Guests include IT leaders, health executives and experts who can shed light on the challenges that healthcare faces and the potential solutions. Continue reading →

Looking ahead to 2021 – predictions, emerging trends, and some advice

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The calendar is a familiar demarcation for the close of one year and the start of a new year. We celebrate together and make resolutions alone. Never in my lifetime has there been a year that I have wanted to see in the rear-view mirror more than 2020. I know that I’m not alone in that sentiment. But the true demarcation will only come later in 2021 when enough people have been vaccinated and we can say this pandemic is largely behind us.

Health IT leaders and their teams across the country have demonstrated incredible creativity, collaboration, resilience, and commitment to their communities this past year. I am in awe of and encouraged by what they have accomplished.

As we come out of this long, dark period in our history with so much loss and so much learned, like others I have some advice for IT professionals next year.

My StarBridge Advisors colleague, David Muntz, has already shared his thoughts on the challenges and opportunities for the coming year as he does each year in a View from the Bridge blog post – “12 Steps to Prepare for 2021 – Big Challenges – Bigger Opportunities”. As always, David has done an excellent job of capturing the key ones with his comments on collaboration, reinventing your IT organization, partnerships, life-work balance, cybersecurity, SDOH, EHR satisfaction, ERP solutions, and more.

I’ll add a few to the list:

    • Capture and institutionalize what allowed your team to work at “COVID speed” – laser focus, fewer concurrent priorities, rapid decision making, and funding.
    • Double down on efforts to increase interoperability within your system and region. Enhance your analytic capabilities. Scale and extend virtual care options which will continue to represent a good portion of care even post-pandemic.
    • Establish the right balance of onsite and remote work for your team once it is safe to return to the office. Account for both the organization’s needs, and your employees needs. Continue to be flexible knowing your team delivers regardless where they are working. Use your new model as an opportunity to rethink your recruitment and talent strategy.
    • As CIO claim your expanded role whether it is as Chief Digital Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, or leading a non-IT operational area. You have more than proven yourself during this pandemic and the rest of the c-suite knows it.

Continue reading →

8 health experts to follow

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In past years, I’ve used the end of the year mark as a way to highlight my most read blogs of the year and encourage you to check them out if you missed them. But who cares about my most read blogs? Instead, I want to amplify the voices of health experts who have educated us throughout this pandemic and who will continue to for many months to come. If you aren’t already following them on social media or listening to their podcasts, I encourage you to do so. They are often interviewed on the major news programs.

Trusting the science, knowing the facts, and maintaining objectivity are critical for all of us to do our part and get safely to the other side of this pandemic.

Here are the experts I recommend you follow in alphabetical order:

Esther Choo, MD, MPH, Co-Founder, Equity Quotient, is an emergency physician and professor at the Oregon Health & Science University. She has been speaking from the front lines of the pandemic since the beginning. She did a podcast series called Doctors’s Log – A Covid-19 Journal in the early months of the pandemic. Twitter: @choo_ek

Laurie Garrett is a Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist and author of several books including “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance” and “Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health”. In 2007, she did a TED talk “Lessons from the 1918 Flu”.  Twitter: @Laurie_Garrett

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, is an internationally respected expert on pandemic response and preparedness. He recently left his position as faculty director of the Harvard Global Health Institute and became dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.  His recent interview on In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt, “The Next Three Stages of COVID-19”, is worth checking out. And as I just learned, he also has his own podcast series, “COVID: What Comes Next”. He is a frequent contributor on all the major news outlets. Twitter: @ashishkjha

Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, has been nominated as the next U.S. Surgeon General, a role he also served in during the Obama Administration.  He is the co-chair of the Biden COVID Task Force. His recent interview on in the Bubble with Andy Slavitt, “Inside the Biden COVID Task Force”, is worth checking out. Twitter: @vivek_murthy

Michael Osterholm, MS, MPH, PhD, is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota and is a world-renowned epidemiologist who has spent his career investigating outbreaks. He is a member of the Biden COVID Task Force. Continue reading →

Say yes to students – they are our future

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There are just so many hours in the day. We can choose what we say yes to and what we say no to. As part of my commitment to developing next generation leaders, I always say yes to individual requests from students and invitations to be a guest speaker at a school. And I never know what other potential connections might come from it.

One of those requests came in October. I got a LinkedIn message asking to be on a panel at the annual Boston Young Healthcare Professionals (BYHP) conference. The young woman who reached out had been an intern in our program at Michigan Medicine when I was CIO. I quickly said yes.

The conference was on “Expanding Our View and Zooming In: What We Can Learn About Healthcare in Our Backyard and Around the World”. My panel was “Healthcare in a Technological Era: Making Boston’s Backyard Even Bigger”. Robert Schultz, managing director at Massnex, was the moderator. On the panelist prep call, I got to know Robert and the other panelists. Robert and I quickly realized that there might be opportunities to work together in the future, so we scheduled a separate call. That call led to another invitation.

Robert teaches the course “Entrepreneurship in Healthcare Organizations” in the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service MPA program at NYU. He asked if I would be a judge for the final class when the students make their business plan pitches – he said think “Shark Tank” but nicer. Of course, I said yes. Continue reading →

Women need male allies

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One of the last glass ceilings has been shattered. Senator Kamala Harris is now Vice President Elect Kamala Harris. She will be the first woman to hold this office. In her speech on November 7, she paid homage to the women who worked to secure and protect the right to vote and the women still fighting to be heard as she said, “Tonight I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been. And I stand on their shoulders.”

And to future generations, she said: “But while I may be the first woman in this office, I won’t be the last. Because every little girl watching tonight sees that this is a country of possibilities. And to the children of our country, regardless of your gender, our country has sent you a clear message: Dream with ambition, lead with conviction, and see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before. And we will applaud you every step of the way.”

The fight for women’s rights and equity is not one that women can wage alone. We need male allies. The good news is that we have many and probably many more that just need some encouragement.

I am seeing an increasing number of resources available on how men can be better allies and support women. Here are two recent articles worth sharing: Continue reading →

The healing power of humanity

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This is one of those weeks where I struggle for the right words. We are all in wait mode. Regardless of the outcome of the election, our nation needs healing. Your relationships with family members, friends or colleagues may be strained as the divisiveness of recent years has grown during this election cycle.

In health care, we focus on healing and take care of everyone regardless of their politics. For inspiration, the words this week from two national healthcare leaders are worth sharing.

Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health, penned a very powerful piece in Becker’s Hospital Review on November 4 titled, “Look to healthcare to remember what decency means”. He calls on leaders to focus on decency saying, “Considering the contentious rhetoric we have witnessed at the highest levels of government throughout this past election season, now is the time for leaders to emphasize decency as the most important trait any one person can exhibit in their organization.” He talks about how our collective sense of decency has been violated saying, “The end result is a pervasive lack of trust, respect and empathy that prevents us from getting anything done. To solve any problems in healthcare or in broader society, we need to reclaim the value of decency and civility.” In a year that has been incredibly demanding and stressful for healthcare professionals everywhere, he closes with, “In healthcare, our care teams have been role models of decency, and our nation would benefit from a closer study of them.”

Lloyd Dean, CEO of CommonSpirit Health, published a short article on November 4 titled, “We Made Our Voices Heard”. Speaking of the 150,000 people who make up CommonSpirit, he says “We believe in the healing power of humanity, and we are called to heal our patients, our communities, and our country in every way we can.” In his closing words, he calls us all to come together: “Even though we don’t yet have all of the election results, and regardless of how you feel about the outcome, I encourage us to all consider how we can reveal the best of humanity during this moment. Let us empathize with those whose perspectives are different from ours. Let us show others how to bridge our differences and find common ground. Let us help our children and our neighbors feel enthusiastic and empowered to make our world a better place. Most of all, let us always show kindness and respect for one another as we seek to move forward as a country, together.”

Be kind, respectful, and decent to one another in the days ahead.

Make your voice heard, your vote counts!

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Like more than 75 million people, I have already cast my vote. My husband and I were there on the first day of early voting in our state. Millions of voters are willing to stand in long lines to vote. And at a time when new COVID-19 cases are averaging over 72,000 a day.

We are on track for record voter turnout before the election is over. In 2016, about 60% of eligible voters actually voted. Given early voting numbers, the projected 2020 total votes could be record breaking at over 150 million compared to about 135 million in 2016. Voter suppression is real and has taken many forms in this election cycle. It is already too late for mail-in ballots in many states – you will have to take it to a dropbox. And yet, early voting is at a record high.

Yes, I voted for Biden. That should be no surprise if you know me or have read many of my blog posts. I do believe this is the most consequential election in our lifetime. When the votes are counted, it will be either Biden or Trump.

The number of undecided voters is at a record low. If you are one of those undecided voters or leaning towards Trump despite all your concerns, I offer up a few statements for your consideration from some unlikely sources on why they also support Biden:

  • Former Republican Party Chairman, Michael Steele has endorsed Biden. He clearly and thoughtfully articulates his position as a longtime Republican in a recent podcast “My Country Matters: Why I am Endorsing Biden”. In the last few minutes of it, he talks about leadership, decency, and character. He quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in saying “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
  • A conservative New Hampshire newspaper, The Union Leader, has not endorsed a Democrat for President in a 100 years. Their editorial “Our Choice is Joe Biden” says “We have found Mr. Biden to be a caring, compassionate and professional public servant. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to be a president for all of America, and we take him at his word. Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the president we desperately need. He will be a president to bring people together and right the ship of state.”
  • The CEO of Expensify, David Barrett, has publicly endorsed Biden in an email to 10M customers entitled “Protect democracy, vote for Biden”. In his opening he says, “That’s right, I’m saying a vote for Trump, a vote for a third-party candidate, or simply not voting at all — they’re all the same, and they all mean — I care more about my favorite issue than democracy. I believe Trump winning is more important than democracy. I am comfortable standing aside and allowing democracy to be methodically dismantled, in plain sight.” His full email is included in this Business News article.

I saw a story of a 102-year-old woman born before women had the right to vote who said this is the most consequential election in her life as she cast her vote. If she can get out and vote, so can you.

Don’t sit this one out. Make a plan to vote and help your family and friends make a plan. Make your voice heard. Every vote matters. This election must be decided at the ballot box by your vote, not the courts.

Resources and Related Posts:

I Will Vote

When We All Vote

Fair Fight

Vote your values

Forward together

12 more days – forward together

5 job search challenges in 2020

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One thing that hasn’t seemed to change during this pandemic is the number of health IT leaders making moves. Since we provide interim management services at StarBridge Advisors, I track these moves closely. I’m currently helping a number of colleagues find new opportunities and having conversations about what it takes to make their job search successful.

I have written many posts focused on career management over the years. Much of that advice remains the same. But in this new environment there are also new challenges:

Updating your resume and telling your story – It is always wise to consider professional resume writing help or at a minimum ask a trusted colleague to review and give you feedback. Ensure your most recent work experience is updated and focuses on outcomes and results. And regardless of why you are looking, be ready to tell your story succinctly and consistently. It is your story and you need to tell it. This is even more important if you are in between jobs for whatever reason.

Competition – It appears to be a “buyer’s” market with many talented people looking for new opportunities. Whether you have decided it is just time for a change or you were let go due to a merger or layoff, you are in a very competitive market. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. It’s best to pursue several opportunities at a time. But be ready for disappointment. Only one person gets the job in the end. Don’t get discouraged. Learn from each situation and prepare for the next. My post, “So you didn’t get the job”, has some advice you might want to check out. Now is a good time to work your network, let colleagues know what you are looking for and nurture your relationship with search firms. And if you learn about a position that’s not right for you, let others you know in search who might be better suited for it.

Preparing for virtual interviews – It’s very possible that all interview rounds will be virtual, and you will never meet people in person until you start the new position if not well after you start. Continue reading →