Winning Strategies

Healthcare executives currently face a number of critical business challenges, including the ongoing transition from volume- to value-based performance metrics, the imminent wave of executive retirements, an overall lack of leadership bench strength—percentage of key leadership positions with ‘ready now’ internal candidates—in critical roles, enhanced physician alignment needs, a strong desire for greater ethnic and gender diversity in executive positions, and continuing consolidation of hospitals and health systems across the country. Given these challenges, there is strong demand for resources and best practices that present an evidence-based approach for designing and implementing a talent management system that drives key performance metrics.

A core theme reinforced throughout this book is the imperative of presenting top management teams and board members with clear and compelling evidence—business performance metrics and verifiable data—that talent development and succession management capabilities are vital investments in the current healthcare environment. Healthcare executives face numerous challenges—the emergence of accountable care organizations (ACOs) or comparable groups of physicians and hospitals providing coordinated patient care, reimbursement degradation, shrinking margins, regulatory changes, increased pressure to reduce costs, and a rapidly aging workforce—that demand new thinking and more effective strategies to demonstrate the ROI of talent management practices. As such, this book provides board members and healthcare executives with accessible, practical, and evidence-based resources and tools, namely the Talent Management Capabilities (TMC) framework, for assessing, developing, and sustaining their organization’s leadership talent pipeline.

Additionally, succession management and talent development practices must be strategically aligned and clearly positioned to tackle ongoing healthcare reform, workforce demographic changes, and the evolving business environment. With these challenges in mind, this book presents a model of best practices with clear validation data illuminating their impact on: value-based performance metrics (HCAHPS scores or patient sati, Medicare spending per beneficiary episode, etc.) reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); traditional workforce metrics (annual turnover for nursing staff, executives, etc.), leadership development metrics (bench strength, internal/external hiring ratio for executive positions, etc.), and leadership diversity metrics (gender and ethnicity diversity of C-suite and executive positions); and the alignment of HR systems to a value-based performance environment.