Dr. Steven Hanks, president and CEO of St. Joseph’s Health and St. Peter’s Health Partners, recently joined the Becker’s Healthcare Podcast to discuss his roles as both CEO and a practicing emergency physician.
From the transcript:
Question: How do you balance the responsibilities of being both president and CEO with working regular shifts in the emergency department?
Dr. Steven Hanks: It’s been an interesting journey for me, because although I’ve been an executive for many years, I never wanted to lose my clinical skills or disconnect from the clinical environment for a number of reasons. Some of it’s selfish. I like being a doctor. That’s what I went to medical school for, and I still greatly enjoy it.
What I’ve come to learn over the years is that there are enormous other benefits to a leader of a healthcare organization actually getting into the trenches with the troops on the front line, because I’ve often said that I learned more about the way the various pieces of my organizations work from the small amount of time I spend in the clinical setting than all the other time I spend in meetings, working with my board on rounds and all these other things. There have been a lot of side benefits.
Another big benefit is it really speaks to the morale of our colleagues when they see the CEO essentially in the emergency department or on the floors as a hospitalist, pitching in and helping, and they know that I experience what they experience. I live with the same frustrations they have with the medical record. I see the same issues with flow and the timeliness of turnaround of laboratory studies, or X-ray studies, or whatever it might be. I have to deal with the fact that we may not be able to accept a transfer, or we may have difficulty effectuating a transfer. They all realize I’m walking a mile in their shoes. It does have a very uplifting effect, I believe, on the morale of our colleagues.
To read more from the interview, click HERE.
