by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | June 11, 2013
Last Wednesday, the Health Management Academy and GE Healthcare announced an expansion of their efforts to mentor and develop health care leaders. The expansion will be delivered via the new Nurse Executive Fellowship program.
"If you think about it, half the expense structure in health care is the people," HMA's chairman and CEO, Gary Bisbee, told DOTmed News.
With the majority of those people being nurses, by extension, that's the largest investment many facilities make. With health care systems everywhere trying to rein in costs, restructuring how they approach patient care is paramount. "In a situation where you're changing the actions of a large number of your employees, it's a huge challenge," said Bisbee. "So the head nurse really has a substantial challenge." With most head nurses gaining training as they go, HMA felt it would be beneficial to offer them some grounding in leadership.
GE Healthcare agreed with Bisbee's assessment, deciding to collaborate with HMA to offer mentorship programs for nurse executives. "We really wanted to be sure we were spread across the C-suite," said Rob Reilly, CMO for GE Healthcare in North America. "Chief nursing officers seemed like a huge gap."
Among its membership, HMA counts executives from about 70 major corporations, which represent nearly half the companies making up the Fortune 100 with health businesses. Health care system members represent 60 percent of the patient revenue in the country and 50% of the nation's hospitals of 100 beds or larger. Those health systems benefit from the cross-fertilization of ideas, priorities and perspectives among members of the executive suite, according to Bisbee.
Jeff Immelt, GE's chairman of the board and CEO was personally involved with encouraging the collaboration between HMA and GE back in 2006 when the Academy GE Fellows Program was launched. Immelt saw the value in the bidirectional learning opportunities, where corporate executives teach what they know, but also learn from the health systems as well.
