During a featured session hosted by Guidehealth and Arcadia at Becker’s 15th Annual Meeting, top health system CEOs discussed how their organizations are confronting the industry’s most enduring challenges — from defining quality and accelerating value-based care to operational transformation and leveraging technology.
Moderated by Kavita Patel, MD, senior policy advisor at Stanford University, the panel included Sue Anderson, regional president at St. Louis-based SSM Health; Omar Lateef, DO, President and CEO of Chicago-based Rush University Medical Center and Rush University System for Health; and Joon Lee, MD, CEO of Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare.
Here are four key takeaways from the session:
1. Quality needs a new definition
The panel opened with a discussion on the limitations of traditional quality metrics and the urgent need to develop tools that better capture meaningful outcomes while addressing cost pressures.
“We’re in an environment where the cost of providing care has gone up every year and the reimbursements have effectively gone down every year,” Dr. Lateef said. “We have to figure out how to collectively do more with less every year. What keeps you up at night is when someone can’t get seen or you get a phone call because someone who got seen has a bad outcome.”
Dr. Lee noted that academic centers often perform well on high-acuity metrics — such as transplant and TAVR outcomes — but struggle with measuring and addressing maternal and community health disparities. He emphasized that system-level change is necessary for progress in value-based care.
“Of course we’re going to focus on what we’re really good at,” Dr. Lee said. “But we’re doubling down on expanding the primary care network as quickly as possible because ultimately we think that we can’t deliver the impactful care without that. It requires a mental shift because it seems like the more good you do in healthcare, the less lucrative it is right now.”
2. Value-based care is the goal — but requires balance
The panelists shared a consensus: while the transition to value-based care is critical, it comes with risks in markets still anchored in fee-for-service models.
SSM Health is further along in its risk-based journey, with approximately $1 billion in capitated revenue and 70 to 80 percent of its business tied to value-based arrangements.
“Our system has said that value-based care is really important and we’ve been working on it,” Ms. Anderson said. “But each of the regions of our system is in a different place. With the billion dollars in capitated revenue, I think the performance in the risk pools is what keeps me up at night more than any other topic.”
3. Innovation starts with culture and care model redesign
As value-based care evolves, systems are rethinking not just technology, but the very way care is delivered. Ms. Anderson underscored the need for a multipronged strategy that includes analytics, workforce innovation and care model transformation.
“There’s never going to be enough people to do what we need to do,” Ms. Anderson said. “We’re spending a lot of our time on our care models, analytics, and lots of data, to determine what are the things that we can address that will move the needle.”
SSM Health is fostering a culture of safety and continuous improvement, with grassroots efforts to streamline care and maximize resource use.
“One project was to cut down the number of tonsils that are sent to pathology,” Ms. Anderson explained. “It sounds like it’s not a big deal, but it’s little things like that that allow us to do more with less.The payoff is huge.”
4. AI and tech can deliver through transformation
Dr. Lateef emphasized the importance of deploying technology with clear purpose and measurable return on investment, particularly given the financial strain many systems face.
“When you’re on a 1% margin and someone says, well, you got to put skin in the game, that ‘skin’ is skin away from taking care of people in your community,” he said. “It’s easier to fail on conventional approaches and lose more money, than it is to be innovative and try to change. The minute you do that, you’re done.”
Dr. Lee added that realizing the full potential of AI and new technologies also requires a fundamental cultural shift. “We have to have a cultural shift,” he said. “We tend to be bound by tradition and we tend to hide behind things like regulation and tradition. Whether it’s value-based care or an emphasis on quality, take some financial risk and try to navigate that space.”