Wright Lassiter III, CEO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, recently joined Morehouse School of Medicine's "Danforth Dialogues" podcast to discuss topics ranging from CommonSpirit's partnership with the Morehouse School of Medicine to effective leadership.
Mr. Lassiter became CEO of CommonSpirit in August 2022, two years after CommonSpirit and MSM, a historically Black medical school in Atlanta, announced their More in Common Alliance partnership. The 10-year, $100 million partnership aims to increase cultural competency and diversify the clinician workforce to improve healthcare access and quality.
In November 2021, the institutions announced the development of three undergraduate and four graduate medical education sites, marking the first phase of the More in Common Alliance.
Mr. Lassiter told MSM President and CEO Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, on the August edition of the podcast that the partnership has "tremendous potential to impact the communities CommonSpirit serves by increasing the pipeline for a more diverse healthcare workforce focused to meet the unique needs of many of its patients."
"Hospitals are very important to communities, but hospitals in and of themselves don't make communities healthier," Mr. Lassiter said. "The partnership is one significant manifestation for us to get out of the four walls of a hospital and actually have impact. That's different than just simply responding to what walks in the door. It allows us to change the fundamental characteristics of communities by creating tool sets of human beings that are equipped with skills to address the challenging, disturbing and unacceptable health inequities that exist in too many communities across the country."
When Mr. Lassiter became CEO of CommonSpirit, he succeeded Lloyd Dean, who retired after a more than two-decade tenure at the top of the nonprofit, Catholic health system. He joined CommonSpirit from Detroit-based Henry Ford Health, where he served as president and CEO.
CommonSpirit is a system of more than 2,200 care sites in 24 states.
But Mr. Lassiter told Dr. Montgomery Rice that the health system focused more on impact than size.
"What I say to our team is, 'At the end of every year, we need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves one simple question: Are the communities we serve better at the end of the year than the beginning of the year because of our presence?' If the answer is 'yes,' then we should keep doing what we’re doing and try to do more of it. If the answer is 'no,' then we need to ask ourselves, 'Why?' and 'How do we change that?'" Mr. Lassiter said.
He also noted the importance of courage as a leadership trait.
"No effective leader always gets it right and certainly doesn't cross the finish line every time," he told Dr. Montgomery Rice. "They take off from a starting line. And so you have to be willing to fight for what you hope to accomplish and fight on behalf of the people that you're doing your work for."
Listen to the August edition of the podcast here.