Traits that "Define a Great Hospital CFO" - Honesty, Integrity, Accountability not Included

A recent article in Becker's Hospital Review entitled, "6 Traits That Define a Great Hospital CFO" [Chief Financial Officer] was most remarkable for what traits were not included.

The Six Traits

Based on interviews with a managing director of health care recruiting for a large executive search firm, and an experienced CFO of large hospital system, the included traits were:
- "Conviction," including "some type of conviction and confidence that their decision-making abilities will lead the hospital to great healthcare outcomes, a healthy population and — as a result — a more financially stable organization."
- "Nimbleness and flexibility"
- "Calm demeanor"
- "Willingness to understand the clinical aspects," in particular, the ability to "at least understand the [clinical] processes from a layperson's point of view, and the most effective CFOs have great working relationships with physicians, nurses, technicians and others."
- "Ability to think long term"
- "Sense of humor"

To be fair, I am glad to see expectations that hospital leaders, even chief financial officers, know something about clinical care, and that they have some sort of commitment to it. This seems to be in contrast to our frequent posts about how the leadership of health care organizations often seems ignorant and uncaring about the health care context and health care values. (However, the phrase above about conviction was not clearly worded. In particular, it did not explicitly suggest quality clinical care ought to be a higher priority than revenue, and could have been read to mean that good care is just a means to increase revenue.)

I am also glad that the article promoted long-term thinking. It also seems to contrast with concerns (e.g., here) about how health care leadership may put short-term revenue ahead of all other goals, also called "financialization." However, again, the article did not explicitly give long-term goals a higher priority than short-term ones.

What was Missing

However, what was more striking were the dogs that did not bark. In particular, transparency, honesty and integrity or even being law-abiding were not on the list of key traits for a CFO. This is particularly noteworthy given how often we have discussed bad behavior by large health care organizations, including various kinds of deception and dishonest behavior, as well as outright crime, such as fraud, bribery or kickbacks, etc.

Also, the list of important traits did not include responsibility or accountability.   This is also noteworthy given that rarely if ever have the leaders of these organizations taken any responsibility or paid any penalty for bad behavior occurring on their watches. Although may large health care organizations have made numerous legal settlements of accusations that include fraud, kickbacks, etc, the leadership almost never admitted wrongdoing in any of them, and almost never had to accept any financial penalty form the organization. This parallels how the US legal system has rarely sought to punish any leader of a large health care organization in such cases, suggesting that health care leaders now have developed impunity.

Given that the article appeared in Becker's Hospital Review, a leading publication for hospital leaders, its apparent cynicism about what once were considered indispensable characteristics of good leadership was disturbing.  It is also disturbing that at the time this was written, the only comment on the on-line version of the article, also the only comment to note this lack, was written by your this humble scribbler.

Summary

This may test some CFOs' sense of humor, but instead let me propose my hopes for better health care leadership. To truly reform health care we should seek reasonable leadership that draws on the collective knowledge and values of health care professionals, and that shows accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty, and ethics.  Not asking our leaders to be honest, ethical and accountable just enables the current dysfunction.