Health Leader Forge

Today’s guest is Lucy Hodder, Director of Health Law Programs and Professor of Law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, and a member of the Institute for Health Policy and Practice in the College of Health and Human Services also at the University of New Hampshire. With her dual appointment, she both helps train the next generation of attorneys in the state in the application of legal principles to health care, and works with the Institute on some of the most challenging health care problems facing the state today.

In this podcast we explore Lucy’s career, a journey that took her back and forth between public service and private practice in several states and regions of the country, including working in the office of the New Hampshire Attorney General, being a senior shareholder in the firm of Rath, Young and Pignatelli, and finally before joining the faculty at the University of New Hampshire, serving as the Legal Counsel to the Governor as well as senior health policy advisor.

I think the thing that struck me most about my interview with Lucy was her commitment to service throughout her career. From the time she was in law school to through her time in a high powered private practice, she made time to provide public service. When the governor asked her to serve as her legal counsel, Lucy’s career was in full bloom. She shares the advice she received from Tom Rath, one of the principals in her firm, and he told her: “You practice in the New Hampshire Bar, when a governor asks you to serve, you have to be hard pressed to say no… that’s what we’re here for, that’s what we do in New Hampshire… when the governor asks you to serve you should say yes.” I think that says a lot about not only Lucy and her firm, but the legal community in New Hampshire.

for more information about this interview, please see our web site, http://healthleaderforge.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today's guest is Dr. Raymond A. Levy, the Executive Director of the Fatherhood Project. The Fatherhood Project is a non-profit fatherhood program in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston, MA. The mission of the program is to improve the health and well-being of children and families by empowering fathers to be knowledgeable, active, and emotionally engaged with their children.

Dr. Levy is a clinical psychologist specializing in psychoanalysis, with over thirty five years of experience in the field. In this podcast we talk about the training Dr. Levy underwent to become a psychotherapist and his career leading up to his founding of the Fatherhood Project. We then talk about the origins of the Fatherhood Project, the kinds of programming and research Dr. Levy’s team undertakes, and the challenges of running a small, mission oriented non-profit.

I think listeners will get a lot out of this interview. First, Dr. Levy does a very nice job explaining the field of psychotherapy which is very interesting. Second, his discussion of how the Fatherhood Project grew out of a research project is enlightening about the origins of great innovations.

For more information, an outline of the interview, and show notes, please see our web site: http://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2016/09/raymond-levy-psyd-executive-director.html

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today’s guest is Luanne Rogers, the President and CEO of The Courville Communities, a long term care system in southern New Hampshire. The Courville Communities include two nursing homes, assisted living communities, and retirement apartments. The Courville Communities is a private, family owned organization, something that is becoming less common as corporations have come to dominate the competitive landscape.

In this podcast, Luanne talks about her thirty-year journey through a field that has gone through many changes. Her career began as a nursing assistant in Chicago, Illinois, working to put herself through college and has included working for privately owned facilities as well as national chains. I really enjoyed my conversation with Luanne. Her passion and commitment to the field is remarkable.

For more information and links to the topics discussed, please visit our web site, http://healthleaderforge.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today’s guest is John Fernandez, the President and CEO of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston, Massachusetts. Mass Eye and Ear is one of the world’s leading specialty hospitals dedicated to ophthalmology and otolaryngology care, or as John says, they take care of everything from the neck up except the brain, but maybe the brain too sometimes.

In this podcast John talks about his journey to leading this world class organization, including his progress into the executive ranks at another world class Boston organization, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Throughout the interview, John talks about his management approach, which focuses on the fundamentals: plan, execute, follow up. While this sounds like a fairly simple formula, I think anyone who has tried it knows that simple isn’t always easy. John tempers his management approach with a focus on kindness, which was something heartening to hear from a senior executive.

One of the things that is clearly important to John is work life balance. We talked about work-life balance both before and during the interview, and one of the pieces of advice he gives to early careerists is to get your personal life sorted out first, and then figure out what you want from work, which was interesting advice. John has a series of questions that he gives people to help guide them through that process. I will post a link to those questions on the podcast web page.

podcast web page: http://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2016/08/john-r-fernandez-president-and-chief.html

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today's guest is Katie Fullam Harris, the Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Accountable Care Strategy for MaineHealth, in Portland, Maine. Katie oversees the development, implementation and coordination of state and federal advocacy on behalf of the MaineHealth System, and also leads the development and implementation of strategy that supports improved access and value for health care consumers and purchasers and the alignment of incentives for providers in the MaineHealth System. Prior to coming to MaineHealth, Katie worked in a variety of not-for-profit, government, and for-profit institutions.

In this podcast, Katie and I discuss her career journey, then transition to talk about what it’s like to manage government relations and health policy for the largest integrated health system in the state of Maine, and the challenges of trying to move a large system towards paying for value. We conclude with a discussion about influence and leadership.

We cover a lot of ground in this interview, especially around the recent evolution of health policy. I think early careerists in particular will get a sense of the importance of integrating proactive government relations in a large healthcare organization.

For more information and podcast annotation, please go to our web site, http://healthleaderforge.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today's guest is Dr. Nirav Shah, the Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Clinical Operations for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, in Pasadena, California. Nirav oversees the health plan and hospital quality, service, accreditation, regulatory compliance, and licensure, as well as nursing, the continuum of care, and the effective use of technology, data, and analytics to produce better patient health outcomes for $24B region serving 4.2M members.

Prior to coming to Kaiser, Nirav served as the Commissioner of Health for the State of New York, administering a $60B budget and was responsible for public health insurance programs covering 5 million New Yorkers as well as regulating the state's hospitals and nursing homes among other responsibilities.

Nirav completed an internal medicine residency at Yale, followed by a fellowship in epidemiology in the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program. Before moving into leadership roles, he worked as a physician researcher at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and at the Geisinger Clinic in Pennsylvania.

I really enjoyed listening to Nirav's journey from physician researcher to large organization leader. Perhaps more than any other guest, Nirav talks about the importance mentors have played in his career, and how he seeks out support and guidance to help him solve his problems, while at the same time reaching out to return the favor.

For more information about the podcast and to review a transcript, please go to our web site, http://healthleaderforge.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today’s guest is Brigadier General R. Scott Dingle, the director plans, operations, and training for the US Army Medical Command, also known as the MEDCOM G-3/5/7. BG Dingle has had an extraordinary career, including attendance at some of the Army’s most respected training schools, battalion and brigade commands, and combat tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I really enjoyed hearing BG Dingle’s career story, but I found his lessons for leaders at the end of the interview particularly striking. He uses a clever metaphor to talking about the need for leaders to never lose their bearing, to never forget they are always in the spotlight, and to never forget they are always part of a team.

This podcast is being released just in time for Independence Day weekend, and it seems appropriate to reflect on the career of a dedicated military leader and combat veteran as we remember that freedom is not free.

For more information about the interview, please visit our website: http://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2016/07/brigadier-general-r-scott-dingle-medcom.html

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today we return to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and our guest is the Reverend Frank Macht, the director of the Chaplaincy. Frank is a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, although he is originally from Germany. Together we reflect on his journey, as he refers to it, and the experiences he has had as he served and trained all over the United States, from Berkley, California, to Atlanta, Georgia, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Nome, Alaska and finally to Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Frank was first called to ministry as a hospital chaplain through a training program known as clinical pastoral education. His interest in this specialized form of ministry led him to become a clinical pastoral education supervisor, which allows him to supervise the clinical training of other chaplains.

In this podcast we discuss the training a hospital chaplain goes through, the role of the hospital chaplain, and specifically the role of the Chaplaincy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

I really enjoyed this interview because of Frank’s unique story and how he enhanced my own understanding of the role of the hospital chaplain and chaplaincy training. I think it’s important for healthcare leaders to understand what a well-trained chaplain can bring to the care team, and I think Frank does an excellent job of explaining that role.

Frank and I had a lengthy conversation about his career and the role of the chaplaincy. To produce this episode, unfortunately I had to edit out much of the conversation that was of interest to me, so I am posting two versions of the interview – the edited version, and the full-length interview.

You are listening to the full-length interview. If you would like to listen to the edited version, please check our web site, http://healthleaderforge.org for the link.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today we return to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and our guest is the Reverend Frank Macht, the director of the Chaplaincy. Frank is a minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, although he is originally from Germany. Together we reflect on his journey, as he refers to it, and the experiences he has had as he served and trained all over the United States, from Berkley, California, to Atlanta, Georgia, to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Nome, Alaska and finally to Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Frank was first called to ministry as a hospital chaplain through a training program known as clinical pastoral education. His interest in this specialized form of ministry led him to become a clinical pastoral education supervisor, which allows him to supervise the clinical training of other chaplains.

In this podcast we discuss the training a hospital chaplain goes through, the role of the hospital chaplain, and specifically the role of the Chaplaincy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

I really enjoyed this interview because of Frank’s unique story and how he enhanced my own understanding of the role of the hospital chaplain and chaplaincy training. I think it’s important for healthcare leaders to understand what a well-trained chaplain can bring to the care team, and I think Frank does an excellent job of explaining that role.

Frank and I had a lengthy conversation about his career and the role of the chaplaincy. To produce this episode, unfortunately I had to edit out much of the conversation that was of interest to me, so I am posting two versions of the interview – the edited version, and the full-length interview.

You are listening to the edited version. If you would like to listen to the full-length version, please check our web site, healthleaderforge.org for the link.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com

Today’s guest is Sheila Woolley, the Chief Nursing Officer and Vice President of Patient Care Services at Wentworth-Douglass Health Systems in Dover, New Hampshire. Wentworth-Douglass Health system includes Wentworth-Douglass Hospital, a 178-bed non-profit, acute-care hospital that employs 2,300 individuals with 1,700 FTEs, has 50,000-visits annually, and is a Level III Trauma Center. The Health System also includes Wentworth Health Partners, which include 23 primary care and specialty practices, and two express care facilities. As we discuss during the podcast, although Wentworth-Douglass is a community hospital, it has clinical affiliations with world-class academic medical centers that enable patients to access some of the best physicians in the region while staying at home on the New Hampshire Seacoast.

In this podcast we discuss Sheila’s career in nursing, the role of the CNO, how the nursing profession has evolved, and conclude with a discussion about leadership.

This is a valuable interview for any aspiring healthcare leader to listen to because Sheila really demonstrates through her career how leadership in healthcare transcends parochial roles, and the future of healthcare delivery will require a team-based approach.

In this podcast we discuss Sheila’s career in nursing, the role of the CNO, how the nursing profession has evolved, and conclude with a discussion about leadership.

This is a valuable interview for any aspiring healthcare leader to listen to because Sheila really demonstrates through her career how leadership in healthcare transcends parochial roles, and the future of healthcare delivery will require a team-based approach.

For more a time outline of the interview and other information, please see our web site, http://healthleaderforge.blogspot.com/2016/06/sheila-woolley-sheila-woolley-rn-nea-bc.html

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit healthleaderforge.substack.com