January 17, 2025: Sarah Richardson and Kate Gamble dive into Michael Dowling's thought-provoking article on six priorities for healthcare leaders. They explore questions that resonate deeply with today's challenges: How can leaders foster innovation while maintaining compliance? What does it mean to balance stability and adaptability in a rapidly evolving environment? And how do CIOs model resilience and optimism amid uncertainty?
Michael Dowling: 6 priorities for health leaders in a new era of change and disruption
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Today in Health IT, we are discussing an article from Michael Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health, Six Priorities for Healthcare Leaders in a New Era of Change and Disruption.
My name is Sarah Richardson. I'm a former CIO for several healthcare systems. Most notably with HC and Optum and now president of the This Week Health 2 29 Executive Development Community where we host a set of channels and events dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Today's episode is brought to you by Chrome os.
Imagine a healthcare system where technology works seamlessly in the background, keeping your data secure, your teams connected, and your patients at the center of care. Visit this week, health.com/google ChromeOS. To learn more, and I'm joined by Kate Gamble, Managing Editor here at This Week Health. Kate, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Sarah. I love that you found this article, specifically Michael Dowling, President and CEO of North Royal Health, but six priorities for healthcare leaders in a new era of change and disruption. So many ways to contextually think about what that could even mean, but he very specifically talks about how important it is to maintain a positive attitude.
with staff and signals resilience, regardless of the challenges coming forward. The ability to embrace change and innovation. Focus on public health. Adaptability, what we learned from COVID 19 and demonstrated the need to abandon conventional playbooks. Avoiding panic because dysfunction and chaos are a result if you don't quell that early.
And then supporting new policies like the one we covered yesterday about HIPAA regulations and new updates from HHS. Being open minded to supporting decisions that have the potential to enhance public good. Health and operational efficiency. Why is this so important for CIOs and what other perspectives do you have, Kate?
So I really liked the fact that he wrote this piece because he was willing to address the elephant in the room. And that's the fact that we were about to see a new administration and a whole bunch of change and disruption. And for whatever reason, I think a lot of people are. Putting their heads in the sand, but it's time to face this.
And one of the things he said that I really liked was, change often brings dysfunction and some chaos, but history reminds us that out of such turbulence comes opportunities that we must embrace. And for CIOs and other leaders. Some of those opportunities are fostering innovation, encouraging the adoption of new technologies and processes that can improve patient care and operational efficiency.
Enhancing public health initiatives, which means leveraging data and technology to support public health efforts and improve outcomes. Promoting adaptability, This is so important, we see it in so many situations, but being able to develop flexible IT strategies that can quickly respond to changing healthcare environments and policies, and maintaining stability, this is a big one, ensuring that IT systems are robust and secure and providing stability, even during times of change.
This is also so powerful coming from the president and CEO of the health system. So when you have your leader of your organization, and you've heard Bill talk about this on his three part leadership series, you can tell just by talking to an organization for a few minutes, likely what the culture of the organization is going to be like.
And if you're the CIO, regardless of to whom you report, you think about what it means to have stability and adaptability within the organization so that you can Foster innovation and enhance public safety initiatives. It can be really tough to do the right thing in an organization. And especially as we come through a new year, and the real reason I love this article was, to your point, there's a lot of things coming up that we may not know what the outcome is going to be.
That is not a time to sit and wait for something to happen. It is the right time to intuitively be paying attention to what's happening around you and implement and go for the things that you know your organization is willing to lean into.
So of course, Change management is always such an important factor and what we need to think about are having strategies for effectively managing technological and procedural changes within health care organizations, balancing innovation with compliance.
Which means navigating the challenges of adopting new technologies while still ensuring compliance with regulations, building resilient IT infrastructures, having systems that can withstand disruptions and support continuous operations. That's been a theme throughout this week, and Leadership in times of crisis, the roles of CIOs and others in leading teams through periods of significant change and uncertainty.
This is something that we see a lot. You want to model the behavior that you hope to see, and people are going to look up. They're going to look to see how leaders react, what they say, what they do. And to me, it's one of those things that if you see that you're a leader. is calm and is approaching things thoughtfully, I think that culture a lot of times starts to seep through.
And of course, collaboration with other leaders, especially clinical, to foster those strong partnerships between IT and clinical teams to make sure you can drive innovation and improve outcomes.
What I love about the things that were uncovered in this article and also some of the perspectives that you and I brought forward is that none of this is new.
It is all a reminder of the things that we've been hearing about over the last few years and why they're so important now. So if you had to go give your board update this quarter, you'd really be talking about, hey, where are the priorities that we are considering for this year based on a new administration as an example, and based on all of the Just climate challenges that have been out there this past few months, and even what we talked about earlier this week with blizzards and wildfires.
Also, the perspectives of change management, innovation with compliance, resilient IT. Time of crisis, clinical leader collaboration. Those are all just, you can make two slides out of that, have a very robust and very healthy conversation with your team, with your boss, with your board. And so as we bring these stories forward to you this year and beyond, really consider the nuggets that you can take forward with you from the things that we are sourcing, but as well, what we are hearing over and over again, and make sure that we are coalescing in a way that can be helpful for you to best lead your organizations.
Yeah, very well said. And I have to steal another one of his lines, which I really liked. He said, the key is to be optimistic, resilient, and continuously give oxygen to hope. And maybe that sounds a little, vague, but I really like what he's saying. And he also talked about the importance of strengthening trust in a public health system in which we should all take pride.
So all of these things put together, can really help to move things forward. Give oxygen to
hope is a great quote. And you'll hear someone say hope isn't a strategy, except that all the things he talks about separately from that are strategies to support the oxygen you're giving to hope.
Perfect call out.
Thank you for bringing up this topic. I really enjoyed talking about it. And I hope everyone takes the time to read his piece.
Kate, thank you for bringing this piece forward. Amazing perspective. And we will continue to go back and revisit. The strategies that we are hearing more and more from our summits and our roundtables and our city tour dinners. Share this podcast with a friend or a 📍 colleague. Use it as a foundation for daily or weekly discussions on the topics that are relevant to you in the industry.
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