WittKieffer Healthcare Year in Review

Year in Review Healthcare

For The Year Ended June 30, 2022

Introduction

Our Purpose at WittKieffer Is to Improve Quality of Life Through Impactful Leadership.

We recognize that the wellbeing of peoples and communities is inextricably tied to health, education and scientific advancement. That’s why WittKieffer exclusively serves organizations aligned to these areas of impact, as we have for more than 50 years. We help our clients navigate this ever-evolving and complex world by using our unique insight to identify and enable exceptional leadership. We precisely tune our services to the needs of each client – whether non-profit or for-profit – delivering high impact executive search, interim leadership and leadership advisory solutions.

Get to know us. You’ll find a remarkable organization – one that delivers unmatched service, that adheres to fundamental values guiding all our work and that understands the power of leadership to produce positive outcomes for people, organizations and communities.

The Quality of Life Ecosystem

Deepening Our Commitment Improving Quality of Life Through Impactful Leadership

Impactful Leadership means having the right people doing the right things and engaging with each other in ways that build value for their people, their organizations and their communities.

Through the last year, we deepened our commitment to Impactful Leadership across the Quality of Life Ecosystem. We now offer an integrated array of services that support our clients in building and developing leadership teams to successfully navigate an ever-evolving and complex world.

Key Trends to Watch

• Cost management gains focus as margins and capital are constrained by labor (particularly nursing) cost and supply chain inflation, lower surgical and elective volumes, decreased acute care and investment portfolio declines.

• Accountable communities for health are expanding to address social determinants of health, such as food and housing insecurity, and ultimately improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

• Systems and providers are increasing focus and investment in digital transformation of clinical, business and consumer experiences with an emphasis on value-based care, while cybersecurity and data sharing remain operational priorities.

• Care delivery continues to shift away from hospitals to perimeter points of care, while consolidation of acute care and integration of provider networks are further changing the provider landscape.

• Omnichannel care and consumerization of care continue to accelerate as a result of expanding provider choice, quality and cost transparency, new retail access points and technology-enabled services (e.g., telehealth); these areas will continue to attract system, investor and alternative provider investment.

• Value and quality-based reimbursement, subscription health and other alternative pricing models are incentivizing health care providers to offer better, more cost-effective care for individuals and populations.

Implications for Leadership

• Healthcare executives and teams must demonstrate extraordinary resilience in an unrelenting “crisis-to-crisis” environment (from pandemic crisis management to cost crisis management), requiring increased self-awareness, self-management and empathy.

• New executive roles are emerging: those that focus on the external community and partnerships with a lens towards improving health outcomes within the communities served; those that serve to champion better conditions for physicians, nurses and employees (a resurgence of the Chief Wellness Officer role, or VP of Accountable Communities); and those focused on digital health.

• The need for new roles and specialized skills, combined with executive retirements, increases the need for more dynamic team constructs, including bringing interim leaders in to fill a gap without losing precious time in problem-solving issues.

• While new C-suite roles (and interim leaders) provide input for the innovation required by the crisis-to-crisis environment, they also shake up the composition of the executive team, requiring CEOs to lead and manage their teams in both more inclusive and more disciplined ways in order to leverage the increased diversity of thought on the team.

• The combination of ongoing crises and disruptive business models requires executives to simultaneously deliver positive outcomes for their patients while transforming the very institutions they lead. In turn, this requires a broader mindset, more varied skills and a more nuanced and effective use of executive teams to span the broad range of paradoxes to manage.

• Meanwhile, pressure on clinicians across the board continues, exacerbated by a significant number of early retirements or stepdowns of tenured leaders. This results in a generational leadership gap that can be filled in the short-term through interim leadership and must be addressed in the medium term through early, thoughtful execution of succession planning beyond the C-suite.

• Increased hiring and promotions of individuals with less “traditional” experiences provides additional means by which to fill the leadership gap – and to diversify the gender and racial make-up of executive suites. Boards and CEOs nervous about doing so can mitigate risk and accelerate development through executive onboarding and mentoring.

• Increasing tension between caregivers and executives, driven by cost-cutting and crisis exhaustion, is intensifying turnover, decreasing trust and followership, and threatening the fabric of health care delivery by making it harder to hold caregivers accountable (for fear of increased turnover). Creating a truly shared story of purpose across these groups is paramount to establishing a culture needed to execute strategy in our radically changed context.

• Health system boards are modernizing outdated structures and focusing on recruiting board members with expertise in health equity, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and consumerism to help boards navigate the future of healthcare. Read more in our 2022 special report on board governance

• Leaders are seeking and gaining exposure to both the inpatient and outpatient/ambulatory setting to expand their experience.