Four hospital and health system CEOs get a jump on the New Year and share their resolutions for 2014.
As the holiday season approaches, so does the end of the year. The close of any year offers a chance for people to look back while also allowing them to look ahead at how they can better themselves in the New Year. For hospital and health system executives, 2013 has been as turbulent a year as ever: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rolled on, hospitals consolidated at a rapid pace and the drive away from fee-for-service continued. As it is likely the healthcare industry will continue to change in 2014, many leaders are choosing to make positive changes of their own next year through New Years' resolutions.
Here, four CEOs share their professional — and personal — resolutions for the New Year, ranging anywhere from seeking improved work/life balance to moving the industry forward in accountable care efforts.
Cathy Barr. Senior Vice President of Community Services for HealthEast Care System and President of Bethesda Hospital (St. Paul, Minn.). The New Year gives us an opportunity to pause, reflect and look back on what went well in the previous year and look at what can be improved. Personally, I'm trying for more work/life balance. It's incredibly important for any leader so you can be fresh and energized and do a really good job.
As an organization, we will look to listen to our patients and community partners and ask them to help identify what the opportunities are. Our organizational vision is optimizing health and wellness for our patients, our community and ourselves, so we also need to make sure we're balancing our employee wellness aspects 
in 2014.
Akram Boutros, MD. President and CEO of The MetroHealth System (Cleveland). My New Years' resolution is to get MetroHealth ready for moving from volume to value and have total cost of care contracts with every major insurer by year's end.
Mark Frey. President and CEO of Alexian Brothers Health System (Arlington Heights, Ill.). I hope to establish a leadership culture that is firmly rooted upon innovation and creativity that will support our organization’s ability to thrive in the rapidly evolving healthcare market
Margot Hartmann, MD, PhD. President and CEO of Nantucket (Mass.) Cottage Hospital. My big push for 2014 is going to be to grow and stabilize primary care accessibility. It's so important to our care delivery on 
the island and it's a big thrust of our energy right now. We also are looking at leveraging clinical opportunities with our partner, Massachusetts General Hospital [in Boston], like the program we started in April that involves oncology nurse practitioners supported by oncologists who visit from Mass General. We are also opening a patient portal, which is exciting for us in a communicative sense — we try to never miss an opportunity to reach out. And finally, a more fun category for me is that I really want Nantucket Cottage Hospital to be a healthy place for those who deliver the care. It's going to be about balance and wellness and finding ways to organize ourselves so that it's easier for people to bring their "A game" every day.