Transforming Care: Why Leaders Need to Be Radically Collaborative

Health care transformation is a dynamic process, but it can be difficult to precisely define and has no clear end point.

There is, however, one unmistakable quality required to successfully transform a health care organization: leadership. Or, as a group of more than 120 hospital and health system leaders and innovators defined it: radically collaborative leadership.

Tracy Duberman, PhD, founder and president of The Leadership Development Group, led participants through an analysis of attributes today’s health care executives need to drive transformational change and the strategic priorities on which they must focus. A recently released report highlights the deep-dive discussion.

Develop a Leadership Success Profile

Key leadership attributes to drive transformational change within health care include radical collaboration, an understanding of the intersection of traditional medicine and population health management, knowledge of culture transformation and a sense of purpose and motivation rooted in creating wellness and equality.

Developing a leadership success profile can move leadership from a theoretical concept to a concrete, scalable application to help organizations identify what is needed to drive performance and develop strategic priorities, the report notes.

As panelist Stephen Klasko, M.D., executive in residence at General Catalyst and former president of Thomas Jefferson University and CEO of Jefferson Health, put it: “We don’t need to think outside of the box. We need a new box where population health, predictive analytics and social determinants move from philosophical exercises to the mainstream of care and payment models.”

4 Strategic Priorities for Transformation

1 | Collaboration and Building Partnerships

Leaders need to work across a diverse group of stakeholders, including payers, educators, policymakers, community health organizations and others. Solutions will require building interdependent partnerships and alignment around broad common goals with others who have a stake in creating health and wellness.

2 | Community Engagement and Connection

Developing a deeper understanding of the communities served and people’s needs is vital. This goes beyond acute care to include overall well-being. Deep listening skills are required to fully understand community needs and expectations and to build, acquire or partner to deliver care where patients want it.

3 | Improving and Enhancing Data

Success metrics in the future health care environment likely will look vastly different than they do today. Leaders must identify which measures are effective at moving the needle and create the infrastructure to track and improve measures around critical issues like health equity and the shift to value-based care.

4 | Workforce Support and Transformation

It is key for leaders to develop their workforces to deliver care differently, focusing on the care continuum and reframing their mindsets toward whole-person care. Greater attention will need to be paid to overall health and well-being of health care workers to reduce burnout, improve retention and recruitment in the increasingly competitive labor market.