Excerpt from “Stewardship:The Noblest Form of Leadership – Part II,” Compass Clinical Consulting Profile in Healthcare Leadership with University of Virginia Medical Center Chief Executive Officer, R. Edward Howell.
Dr. Cary Gutbezahl: Leadership development of the future will includes some intense focus on collaboration, cooperation and partnering?
R. Edward Howell: Yes. A lot of people talk collaboration, but I’m not so sure everybody understands it.
It’s not cooperation; cooperation is working together agreeably.
Collaboration is working together aggressively, making sure you understand what you are going to do together and what you want to achieve.
As we talk about leadership development within our organization, we have an obligation to give our people the knowledge, skills and mindset to help them reinvent themselves as the healthcare industry changes. This includes intense training on collaborative efforts.
Dr. Cary Gutbezahl: How does this help you prepare for the future?
R. Edward Howell: The real message is that all of us need to be held accountable for what we do. We have to make sure that the patient is better off and healthier because of
what we’ve done. So at UVA, we’re focusing heavily on two items: quality and efficiency.
If we use our resources well, we’ll have a more efficient organization and one that can handle the outcomes that the public is going to increasingly expect.
The question is, will we have our own system of an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) be part of a larger system of an ACO or be multiple parts of a larger organization?
We’re going through a strategic-planning process that will help give us some ground to work on. But as we go into that process—getting back into the concept of stewardship—we do so from a very strong position because of the changes we have already made. Being able to have the organization deal with challenges from a position of strength is, in my mind, the definition of stewardship.
Our balance sheet is solid. Last year we had a record operating margin, and we’re going to have a solid one again this year. We understand that we’re always improving quality and making strides toward quality-improvement activity, so we’re going into a strategic-planning process from a position of strength.
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DOWNLOAD “Stewardship:The Noblest Form of Leadership – Part II,” Compass Clinical Consulting Profile in Healthcare Leadership with University of Virginia Medical Center Chief Executive Officer, R. Edward Howell.
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