Systemness: Leading Healthcare Systems from Theory to Reality.

Abstract

DOI: 10.1097/HAP.0000000000000112 David A. Rubenstein, FACHE, is an executive consultant to the US Army Medical Command in San Antonio, Texas. He served as Commanding General of the US Army Medical Department Center and School and Chief in the US Army Medical Service Corps, retiring in 2012 as major general. He also served as 2008–2009 chair of the Board of Governors of the American College of Healthcare Executives. The feature article authors in this issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management perform an important service for leaders at all levels of health and healthcare organizations. Let’s applaud them for that. Retired Memorial Hermann Health System leaders Charles D. Stokes, FACHE, and Rod Brace provide research and a description of what needs to be done to reach systemness; Aimee Daily, FACHE, chief transformation officer at Memorial Health System in Illinois, provides a useful description of her organization’s road to systemness. We should take lessons, tools, and challenges from both feature articles and add them to our professional toolboxes. Then, we owe it to our teammates, patients, and many other stakeholders to develop the mindset to go beyond systems in name only to systems that exhibit true systemness, ones that successfully move from theory to practice. Achieving systemness is a journey. Christopher D. Van Gorder, FACHE, whom I will introduce later, has been on that journey as CEO of a system for more than 20 years. Others I will introduce have been on their current CEO journeys for shorter, but just as impactful, times. Drawing from their stories, I will discuss the mindset of executive leadership that describes the goal and moves the system from theory to reality.