ThinkTank CEOs ON CAMPUS
Healthcare executives who participate in special programs on campus share their thoughts on the industry’s demands on its leadership and the CEO’s changing role. “Given the rapid, unprecedented changes underway in the healthcare industry, leaders must be focused in the short term on how to adjust to the evolving realities of healthcare reform, particularly the impact of changes in payment from governmental and private payers. At the same time, leaders need to think ahead about what it’s going to take to assure their organization’s longterm viability.” – Les D. Hirsch
Through its “Conversations with Senior Healthcare Executives” series, panel discussions and guest lectures, the Department of Interprofessional Health Sciences and Health Administration welcomes the industry’s top leaders to campus to interact with students and alumni. Recent visitors include Leslie (Les) D. Hirsch, MPA, FACHE, President and CEO of Saint Clare’s Health System in Denville, New Jersey, and Chair-Elect of the New Jersey Hospital Association, and Deborah K. Zastocki, DNP, RN, FACHE, President of Chilton Medical Center in Pompton Plains, New Jersey, and Vice President of Atlantic Health System, who share their thoughts on leadership and the ever-changing workplace.
“The CEO role is no longer one of command and control. Rather, it is about building relationships and working strategically in dealing with the generational gap. You need to communicate and engage everyone. Healthcare leaders need to be able to deal with the unexpected and to create organizational agility.” – Deborah K. Zastocki
Then Now From 2002-2007, while he was Advancing Knowledge: “I am very a candidate for the PhD in Health pleased to say that one of the Sciences degree in the now-named articles I published, which I extracted Department of Interprofessional from my dissertation research, is Health Sciences and Health widely cited by many authors Administration at SHMS, Jesus around the world,” Casida says. “Jessie” Casida, PhD ’07, RN, APN-C, CCRN-CSC, conducted his dissertation research on the relationship of nurse managers’ leadership styles and nursing-unit organizational culture in acute-care hospitals in New Jersey. His research was the first to investigate the extent to which nurse managers’ leadership behaviors influence a nursing unit’s performance in areas such as patient satisfaction, length of hospital stay, cost effectiveness and quality care.
At the University of Michigan Forward Thinking: Casida hopes to School of Nursing, Casida is move these studies to large efficacy trials, an Assistant Professor in the followed by comparative effectiveness, Department of Acute, Critical dissemination and implementation and Long-term Care and studies in order to inform evidence-based the Chair/Faculty Lead for practice and healthcare policy. the Undergraduate Honors Program. His current research relates to the self-management of patients with life-limiting illness: complex and chronically ill, and patients tethered to a life-sustaining technology such as a mechanical heart. “Over the past five years, I focused on understanding the phenomenon from different angles of self-management, including but not limited to the intersections of the physical, physiological, biobehavioral and caregiver (family members and healthcare providers) support systems of these patients,” Casida explains. 7