The contemporary hospital or health system CFO is a strategic partner to the CEO and is involved in virtually every aspect of the organization, from mergers and acquisitions to restructuring, strategic planning and patient experience and outcomes.
Brenda McCormick, CFO of Children's Minnesota in St. Paul, told Becker's Hospital Review about the biggest misconception about the CFO role.
Question: What's the biggest misconception about hospital or health system CFOs?
Brenda McCormick: I believe the biggest misconception about what we do as health system CFOs is that we're number crunchers solely concerned about margins. While "financial" is in our title, the patient family is at the center of everything we do. At Children's Minnesota, we aim to invest in technologies and capital projects that will improve our patient experience and outcomes while also decreasing operating costs.
To that end, my team and I are partners to operations and other teams across our system. We assess both financial metrics and impact metrics, such as: Are we addressing health disparities? Are we delivering consistent value to our patient families? Are we improving access to our care? Financials can only go so far if we're not also delivering the high-quality, expert pediatric care our families deserve.