CEOs are becoming increasingly candid about environmental pressures putting their organizations — and the healthcare industry as whole — in unforgiving situations.
In October, Fortune and Deloitte tapped 104 CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, Fortune Global companies and the global Fortune community for their take on economic and geopolitical issues.
CEOs increasingly gave a bleak outlook for the next 12 months. Forty-eight percent said they feel "pessimistic" or "very pessimistic" about the global economy, up from 38% who said the same in June. Twenty-two percent expressed pessimism about their industry's performance in the year to come, up from 14% in June. And 7% shared that they feel pessimistic about how their own company will perform.
Hospital and health system CEOs around the country are familiar with that growing pessimism; multiple executives have been speaking candidly about the somber state of things, from rising costs, to staffing shortages, to insurer relations. Baligh Yehia, MD, president of Philadelphia-based Jefferson Health, described hospitals' financial reality as "sobering" and "disturbing," but not surprising. When it comes to reimbursement mechanisms, Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of San Diego-based Scripps Health, said care providers are "the bottom of the food chain, and the food chain is not being fed."
"Leading the hospital back to financial stability while finding a relevant post-COVID vision that proves to be competitive and, at the same time, energizes your team to find renewed purpose in your hospital's work; that is unforgivably hard," Kenneth Kaufman, chair of KaufmanHall, wrote in an August blog post.
What's more, healthcare CEOs are increasingly aware of consumers' dwindling patience for the industry's shortcomings.
"How much more patience do consumers have for healthcare being so slow to improve?" Maulik Joshi, DrPH, president and CEO of Hagerstown, Md.-based Meritus Health, asked in October.
This widespread frustration is making its way into the numbers: CEO exits from hospitals and health systems through the first nine months of the year are up 67% from the same time period in 2022.
Matt Heywood, president and CEO of Wausau, Wis.-based Aspirus Health, summed it up in an August interview with Becker's. When asked what he's most excited for in the year to come, he chuckled: "I usually look ahead five years and I'm not excited."
One perk for the pessimistic: Transparency about the state of the industry can help build trust between CEOs and employees, many of whom experience healthcare's pitfalls on frontlines. Nurses have been open about their desire for honesty from leadership — and how little they feel they get it.
It's important "to make sure [workers are] hearing all the great things that are going on within the organization, [as well as] the things that are not going as well or we're struggling with and that we're working on," Michael Dandorph, president and CEO of Burlington, Mass.-based Tufts Medicine, told Becker's. "Employees appreciate hearing both sides of that."