Accelerating Change with Interim Healthcare Executive Leadership

An Interim Healthcare Executive Leadership strategy can help healthcare organizations and medical group practices to:

• Accelerate change
• Catalyze operational initiatives
• Keep the organization moving forward

During the often 6-month plus process for recruiting a replacement for a key executive role, or during a time of leadership transition where the long-term value of the role is being assessed, the deployment of an Interim Healthcare Executive Leader can give senior leaders and their board of trustees a much-needed boost in these very challenging times. Interim Healthcare Executive Leaders are highly experienced, adaptable, and reliable professionals. They are enthusiastic and intrepid change agents who can quickly assess operational performance gaps, existing management strengths and weaknesses, and opportunities for improved physician alignment and integration. They provide senior leadership and/or the board of trustees the time they need to focus on other pressing issues during a prolonged leadership transition.

More Than an Extra Pair of Hands

An Interim Healthcare Executive is more than just an extra pair of hands during a transition. The Interim Healthcare Executive comes with a fresh perspective, can objectively assess the situation and, with this fresh pair of eyes, can assist senior leadership to reprioritize and recalibrate its efforts. Where politics and long-standing, and sometimes, dysfunctional relationships are the reality and burden of the incumbent or outgoing senior leader, the Interim Healthcare Executive can step in free of these constraints and act as a “Doer” to accelerate change, implement needed actions, and plough the road for a longer-term successor.

Catalyst vs. Placeholder

In today’s fast-changing environment, healthcare organizations and physician group practices cannot afford to stand still. The external regulatory, reimbursement, and technology environment is driving exponential change in our industry. Indeed, maintaining or defending the “status quo” is a recipe for extinction. To that end, the Interim Healthcare Executive is best utilized as a catalyst for change in an organization that may be at risk of losing momentum or getting stuck. Many of us have worked in healthcare organizations where the cultural inertia, political barriers, and fear of change have been daunting detractors for critically needed evolution. Organizations that cannot respond to these changes or, better yet, proactively tackle these challenges will be left behind.

Business Partners for Physician Leaders

With the advent of more physician leaders in senior administrative roles in health systems and large medical group practices, the utility of a “dyad” non-physician partner is evident. Many new physician leaders are talented clinicians and have credible clinical leadership skills, however, they cannot “do it all.” When transitioning to a physician leadership model, the Interim Healthcare Executive can serve as a supportive business partner and can be utilized effectively to boost the physician leader’s efforts. This partnership can ensure success during a leadership transition as well as assess the need for a longer-term executive administrative partner. The Interim Healthcare Executive has valuable depth of knowledge in strategic, operational, and financial areas of the enterprise and can be a valuable partner to the new physician leader.

When Full Plates Become Overflowing Platters

In the C-suite, we often feel that we are running out of time – health care is changing so rapidly. Financial and reimbursement uncertainties, for example related to the Accountable Care Act, coupled with daunting budget challenges often pressure senior leaders to cut needed executive roles and skimp on leadership development training of promising administrative and physician managers who could fill the senior leadership gap. The result is a chronically overwhelmed leadership team with an endless cascading list of “To Do’s” that are never fully resolved and stalled performance improvement initiatives that are never quite completed. Managers, including senior leaders, no longer have “full plates” they have been handed huge “platters” that quickly overflow.

Integrator and Team Booster

The Interim Healthcare Executive, in addition to bringing a fresh perspective from the outside, can help the senior leadership team “see the forest for the trees.” As an outside consultant, the Interim Executive can more objectively assess talent of the existing managers. Often with turnaround skills and experience, the Interim Executive is not shy about accelerating personnel changes that may have stalled. With this fresh perspective and without the political baggage, the interim executive can assist to realign individuals to areas where their talents are best suited and release the logjams that may have developed over the years. The result is talent rises to the proper place, adding value for the long term and creating better partners for colleagues and physicians which keeps the organization moving forward.

What To Look For in Your Next Interim Healthcare Executive

Implementing an Interim Healthcare Executive Leadership strategy during leadership transition in a healthcare organization can strengthen the efforts of senior leadership and/or its board of trustees during a highly volatile time in health care. Senior leaders should look for an Interim Healthcare Executive who thrives in the fast-paced, constantly changing health care environment and, as such, is uniquely qualified to hit the ground running. The ideal Interim Healthcare Executive will come to the interim leadership assignment with key attributes that add value right away to the organization during its transition. The best Interim Healthcare Executives have demonstrated in their careers that they are adaptable, flexible, and reliable change agents – necessary attributes of a great partner and for the healthcare organization that needs to keep moving forward and maintain, or even accelerate, its momentum.