Peter Paige, MD, became UVA Health's inaugural chief clinical officer Dec. 11, marking a departure from his most recent role as the CEO of Albany (N.Y.) Medical Health System.
The move, however, signifies a return to familiar territory for Dr. Paige, who previously served as executive vice president, chief physician executive and chief clinical officer at Jackson Health System in Miami.
Dr. Paige says he strategically embraced his CEO role at Albany Medical Health System, recognizing it as a valuable opportunity to better understand the clinical intricacies and strategic business considerations that come with running an academic medical center.
Now back in the role of chief clinical officer at Charlottesville, Va.-based UVA Health, Dr. Paige's primary focus is on improving efficiency and standardizing clinical operations across the four-hospital system.
Becker's spoke with Dr. Paige a mere eight days into his new position about how he plans to leverage his CEO perspective, his top priorities for 2024 and more.
Editor's note: Responses have been lightly edited for style and clarity.
Question: What are the key challenges and opportunities that come with stepping into a newly created C-suite role?
Dr. Peter Paige: It's both a challenge and an opportunity. On a positive side, we can prioritize and create what we need based on what we think will be most effective for the organization to continue to improve upon a lot of our basic indicators. We're all trying to get better and better with quality, satisfaction, experience, and staff satisfaction and retention. All of those will factor in. They've done a lot of great work here. I've been very impressed with the leadership teams that I've worked with so far. But there are always opportunities, and I think that being able to structure this role to help us prioritize targeted areas is a great opportunity. It's also been fun because I've already had people reaching out to me saying, "Oh, could you help with this? Could you help with that?" and I'm not even two weeks in.
The challenge is that there is no template — it's not like somebody was in this role previously. And so it's really perceived as kind of an ambiguous role to a lot of people in the organization. You have to navigate the waters carefully because a lot of people have been here for a long time and are very successful. You have to be very respectful of boundaries and be a resource and an influence in a lot of these areas, but be respectful of what people have done and continue to do very well.
Q: What is the most crucial thing for a new C-suite leader to do in their first month to ensure a smooth transition?
PP: It's visibility. You have to get out there. You have to meet with people. I'd rather go to their office or a hospital to sit down with people and better appreciate and understand some of the challenges they're going through, what's going well and what's not. In an inaugural role, it's also important to help clarify what the expectations are of me in this role and how I can support them. This healthcare system is full of people with a lot of skill and experience. It's that focus I need to be committed to, especially for the early portion of the transition.
Q: How has your past CEO role prepared you for your current role? Do you see any overlap there?
PP: The biggest reason that I wanted to be the CEO of a medical center was I wanted to experience some of the things that, as a physician leader, I hadn't had as much responsibility over. Going through that process for the past 18 months has broadened my scope, my experience and my understanding of what CEOs of academic medical centers go through on a day-to-day basis. Some of the things that I didn't appreciate as much as a physician leader, as it relates to nursing challenges, facilities and maintenance or capital budgets and investments — those aren't as prominent for physician leaders in some organizations. I just thought that getting that experience would make me stronger for a role like this in a big complicated system where my relationships with other leaders are a little more well-informed. It makes you better at supporting and being a resource to CEOs across the health system, understanding some of their challenges and trying to work collaboratively with them to come up with solutions. Overseeing the budget for a big academic medical center is a significant task, especially in this day and age. It just gives you a different viewpoint and a bit of a different objectivity.
Q: What are your one or two biggest priorities for 2024?
PP: It's going to be trying to integrate the community hospitals with the academic medical center, medical college, training programs, the faculty and potentially with research. We have ambulatory surgery centers, a couple of different medical groups. I'm trying to create more alignment across all those different areas and disciplines. I was formerly a private physician in emergency medicine, and I joined medical groups at my last two sites. I have a lot of experience with multiple physician groups and types, so my hope is that we'll also be able to create greater alignment with some of the private practitioners, medical groups and the main campus.
I'm also focused on recognizing things that are being done really well. There are pockets in the organization that do some great work if we can figure out how to harness and promote that on all the different campuses. Ultimately, there's going to be a lot of community outreach as well. We have a lot of communities locally that we support, but we want to be a bigger resource for the state and potentially beyond as it relates to types of care that we provide that other places may not be able to provide.