Richard Vath, MD, president and CEO of Fransican Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in Baton Rouge, La., is reflecting on his 40 years in healthcare ahead of his retirement on June 30.
"It gets a little bit more, to some extent, emotional to think that I'm not going to be part of this organization, which is such a great organization," Dr. Vath told Becker's.
Dr. Vath is passing the torch to E.J. Kuiper, former CEO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health's Midwest division, who began serving as the Louisiana health system's president and CEO on May 1.
Dr. Vath will support the transition of the role until he departs, and has shared with Mr. Kupier some of the areas that he is most proud of in the organization and the path taken to get there.
"My advice to him is to continue to expand that because that will help us in the future," Dr. Vath said.
Dr. Vath began his time in healthcare in 1983, and has watched the industry evolve overtime.
For 23 years, he practiced as a pulmonary critical care physician in Baton Rouge before joining FMOLHS' Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge as its quality and patient safety medical director in 2006. Dr. Vath was then named president and CEO of FMOLHS in 2019, Catholic Health World reported in April.
FMOLHS comprises 10 hospitals, 1,915 medical employees and more than 18,000 employees, according to its website.
Upon his retirement, technology is an area of healthcare that Dr. Vath would like to see continued improvements in.
While it can be used successfully in many ways, tools like machine learning and AI are still in their infancy, and require caution when being used by providers.
To help in this area, Dr. Vath set up a task force during his time at FMOLHS to monitor how these types of technologies were being used.
"It's our time to now learn as much as we possibly can," he said.
Quality outcomes were also not a big focus when Dr. Vath joined the industry. It's an area he is happy to see making successful strides.
"Now we can deliver and we can measure and actually display for everybody what true quality outcomes we can provide," he said. "That's always been a little bit elusive to the general public. I think that has changed dramatically, and we have to continue to do that."
Like many careers in healthcare, the role of CEO has also evolved over the last few years, and is no longer seen as just the primary strategist for the organization, but instead a leader who now must understand both strategy and operations.
While the industry has also been faced with career burnout, retention and recruitment challenges, Dr. Vath encouraged people to remember why they decided to join this industry in the first place.
"For all of us who have spent an entire professional lifetime in the industry, we have to make sure that we can actually somehow express and influence and inspire those to continue to work because of what we got out of it over that period of time," Dr. Vath said. "That's a difficult task for many, many people, but I think that's what we've worked on a great deal in terms of our team members."
Dr. Vath also gave some advice for future CEOs in the industry, with suggested focus on patient experience, driving quality care and controlling cost of care for their organizations in order to see success.
"We need to change the quality of care and focus on the health of populations," Dr. Vath told Catholic Health World. "We have to figure all this out, and also figure out how to lower the total cost of care — or I'm not sure what will happen in the long haul."