Chris Howard will soon start building up frequent flier miles — the leader recently took charge of 18 hospitals in four states when he became the president of hospital operations and executive vice president at St. Louis-based SSM Health Care. Prior to taking on his new role in July, Mr. Howard served as president and CEO of SSM Health Care-St. Louis. As part of his new responsibilities, one of his first tasks is traveling from hospital to hospital to get to know each facility's community and employees.
SSM Health Care reorganized its structure late in July, which led to Mr. Howard's new title and the creation of three operating divisions: Hospital Operations, Physician and Ambulatory Care Operations and Healthcare Delivery, Finance and Integration.
Here, Mr. Howard shares why SSM restructured its operations, what his short- and long-term goals are in his new role and how SSM keeps employees focused on the system's mission statement: "Through our exceptional healthcare services, we reveal healing presence of God."
Question: I understand you took on a new role recently, overseeing all hospital operations at SSM. How has the transition process been? How did you prepare for the transition?
Chris Howard: It's been quite smooth actually, though at the moment incredibly busy since I'm filling my new role and my previous role as president of SSM-St. Louis while we conduct a search to fill that position.
My previous experience as president of SSM-St. Louis, and prior to that as president of the Oklahoma market for SSM, has provided me with a substantial knowledge base that I have used in transitioning into my new role. After 20 years with SSM , I know very well the way in which the system conducts business and with my overall experience have a pretty good idea of where healthcare as an industry is moving. I've been able to apply the best of both roles to help the transition.
Q: What are some goals you hope to achieve in your first year in your new role?
CH: The plan for the near term is to help our hospitals continue to focus on finding ways to improve quality, safety and satisfaction while simultaneously identifying new ways to reduce costs within our system so that we perform at a high level and are prepared to sustain the impending economic storm of healthcare reform.
In the long term, we will focus on strategically positioning this ministry to provide the type of healthcare that will be necessary to meet the needs of the communities we serve. Our focus will be on improving the patient experience; this includes safety, quality, and satisfaction across the full continuum of care. At the same time, we will be focused much more on prevention and wellness, while continually improving the value of the care we provide.
As an example, we are rapidly improving our value-based delivery system all across SSM Health Care, focusing heavily on improving patient satisfaction, improving quality across the board and ensuring that we meet value-based metrics that are being introduced by government and private payers.
On the physician side, we are investing significant time and resources in creating clinically integrated networks which will be comprised of our hospitals, employed physicians, independent physicians and pre- and post-acute care delivery providers, all of which will be necessary to provide exceptional healthcare services.
We're also ensuring that all of our employed primary care physicians achieve National Committee for Quality Assurance Level 3 certification as patient-centered medical homes.
Madison, Wis.-based Dean Health Systems and Dean Health Plan recently joined the SSM family, and I think that's a statement of the direction for SSM moving forward. We are committed to strategically aligning our hospitals, our physicians, our health plans and clinically integrated networks to ensure that we are able to develop and provide the care delivery system of the future.
Q: What insight can you give as to why SSM reorganized its structure?
CH: The optimal future of care delivery systems will require physicians and hospitals to work more closely than ever before to ensure that high quality, cost effective healthcare is provided through clinically integrated networks. Our new structure aligns our hospitals, physicians and health plans to ensure we achieve those goals.
Q: Under your leadership, SSM Health Care-St. Louis has been named a Best Place to Work by the St. Louis Business Journal four times. Can you share any successful programs that keep employees engaged and make it a great place to work?
CH: Being named a best place to work in St. Louis for the fourth year in a row is indeed a tremendous honor. One of the things I admire most about SSM is how we as an organization engage our employees at all levels. Our employees are methodically involved in making decisions that affect their work, through things like team huddles, team goal setting and various multidisciplinary teams and work subgroups. It's been hardwired into our culture and we spend significant time and effort in leadership development in this area.
We also celebrate the heritage of our system. And I believe that's very important, because our employees should know and understand our history, since they are now the generation responsible for a ministry that was born 141 years ago. We believe employees should take great pride in carrying on the values and mission of our founding sisters.
We celebrate our system's heritage in a number of ways, but probably the most significant is the annual celebration called Mission Days. We bring employees across our system together to take some time to remember the great work that our sisters have performed over the years and the values of our system which are embedded in the very fiber of our organization. We take a few minutes to reflect upon not only the great work that's been done, but also on how we will need to work together in the future to ensure that SSM remains a leading healthcare provider.
Q: As a major healthcare system leader, what do you find yourself spending the most time on during the day?
CH: Each day I try to learn something I didn't know the day before.
I appreciate the opportunity I have to engage with our employees, even more now within my new role across our entire system. I try to stay in touch with what's really happening in the organization so that I understand how people feel and so I can learn from them what opportunities exist for our organization that I wouldn't know about otherwise. I think that's an important part of every executive's role in an organization and I enjoy it. We provide healthcare in four great states and it's wonderful to get out and see our ministry in action across all of those communities.