2024 New Orleans Cluster

Not-for-profit health systems across the country are struggling to return to pre-pandemic operating performance. Significant drug, supply, and wage cost inflation, labor shortages, and increased competition are challenging the return to normalcy and contributing to deteriorating financial performance.

While nearly all systems implemented traditional cost and performance improvement levers to optimize their operations and achieve financial turnaround, the usual playbook has proven insufficient to adequately address the scale of the challenge. Leading health systems that seek to not only survive on minimal operating margins, but also continue to grow and expand their impact can employ a broader suite of tools to help them navigate ongoing challenges.

The headwinds of an aging population, deteriorating payer mix, and accelerated cost inflation from high-cost drugs such as biologics—and with no end in sight to clinical workforce shortages–we’ve breached the traditional cost-subsidization wall that has been the historical lifeblood of hospital system operating performance. As the traditional model crumbles, forward-thinking systems can not only survive but emerge into the future stronger, more agile, and with a deepened community impact through a process of redesigning their system to overcome the challenges and accelerate the opportunities presented by the rest of this decade.

This interactive session will equip leaders to chart a sustainable future for their organization based on contemporary examples of successful transformations, leading edge strategic and financial planning approaches and peer-to-peer sharing with other senior leaders on the same journey.

Seminar Objectives:

• Explore the magnitude of the challenges to the predominant economic model in the future operating environment.
• Discuss the impact of traditional performance improvement levers and their (in)sufficiency to bridge the gap between forecasted performance and sustainable operating margins.
• Define sustainability for a not-for-profit health system and understand the scale of the gap between system financial forecasts and what it will take to sustainably fund the future.
• Identify the broader portfolio of levers that a system should consider and employ to redesign their system to thrive in 2030 and beyond.
• Apply a process for aligning on the scale of the problem, identifying the portfolio of initiatives to design a thriving system of the future, and prepare for execution.
• Investigate how other senior leaders are managing the ongoing crisis and their plans to navigate the complexities of the future.

Who Should Participate:

Senior Leaders, C-suite, Clinical Executives

Presented By:

Craig E. Deao, Managing Director, Huron

Sid Raman, PhD, Director, Innosight Strategy Practice at Huron Consulting Group