Four Hospitalists Retrace Path to C-Suite Executive Ranks
Dr. Steve Narang
CEO, Banner Health’s Good Samaritan Medical Center, Phoenix
Path to the C-suite: Medical school at Northwestern University; residency at Johns Hopkins; pediatric hospitalist at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans; medical director of Pediatric Hospitalists of Louisiana; master’s in healthcare management from Harvard; chief medical officer at Banner Health’s Cardon Children’s Medical Center
As a resident at Johns Hopkins in pediatrics, Dr. Narang wasn’t always pleased by what he saw—too many process errors and patient safety gaps, and too much waste. Healthcare resources were not being spent in the right way, he discovered.
“I was struck by [the fact] that we spent a lot of our resources in publishing more articles about what’s new, and what the coolest drug is,” he says. “I saw very little of that [relating to] what does this mean in terms of value?”
He became a hospitalist because he saw it as a role in which he could “really touch everything” if he chose to do so and work within the system to improve it.
“The hospital could use a partner,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges we have in healthcare is hospitals and physicians are often not working together to add value, and they’re subtracting from value, and they’re competing with each other.”
If doctors make the effort to learn the management aspects of working in a hospital, they can put themselves in a great position to take on big leadership roles, Dr. Narang says. He says hospitals are seeing the value in having physicians in those roles.
“If you can find the right leader and it happens to be a physician, if it happens to be a physician who can speak that language—and find a sweet spot for independent physicians, employed physicians, and hospitalists to deliver value, which we have to now I think it’s the best way to go,” he says. “I think you’re going to see a trend moving forward to this as more physicians become more interested in this track.” —TC
Being a hospitalist was a key strength of my background. Hospitalists are so well-positioned…to get truly at the intersection of operations and find value in a complex puzzle. Hospitalists are able to do that.
—Steve Narang, MD, a pediatrician, hospitalist, and the then-CMO at Banner Health’s Cardon Children’s Medical Center in Phoenix
Dr. Brian Harte
President, South Pointe Hospital, Warrenville Heights, Ohio
Path to the C-suite: Resident at University of California San Francisco; private practice hospitalist in Marin County, near San Francisco; hospitalist at Cleveland Clinic; program director of hospital medicine at Cleveland Clinic’s Euclid Hospital; chief operating officer at Cleveland Clinic’s Hillcrest Hospital For about two hours a day, Dr. Harte makes his way through South Pointe Hospital—to see and to be seen. Before he started doing this as president of the hospital, he underestimated how important it was to stay visible to everyone—nurses, doctors, housekeeping, and so on.
“The impression that makes surprised me,” he says.
He’ll ask what people need to do their jobs better. He’ll also pop into patients’ rooms, introduce himself, and ask how their experiences have been. Then he takes that feedback and incorporates it into his planning.
Dr. Harte says he likes to have an “open and transparent” relationship with physicians and lists his credibility, both as a physician and a person, as a top attribute for a leader. For those embarking on leadership roles in a hospital, he says it’s a must to have a “strong mentor that you can go to.”
