Every Health System Faces Crisis—Here's What Industry Leaders Recommend

Nearly five years after the global COVID-19 shutdowns began, health care leaders continue to grapple with all manner of emergent situations and challenges—both large scale and small, the anticipated and the unforeseen.

Newsweek brought five health care industry experts together for a virtual panel event on Thursday, to discuss best practices for managing future crises. The hourlong event, programmed and led by Newsweek's health care editor, Alexis Kayser, featured insights from a former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, the current chief physician executive at Press Ganey and the field chief information security officer with Lumifi Cybersecurity, among others. Titled "Crisis Management: A Crash Course for Health Care Leaders," the panel was intended to provide professionals with a blueprint on how to face a range of difficulties.

A key takeaway from the conversation? Preparation and planning can make any crisis more manageable.

"When the house is on fire, you don't want to be reading the instructions for the fire extinguisher," said Lumifi's Mike Hamilton.

All of the panelists also stressed the importance of building trust and a strong reputation. That way, winning organizations and cultures are able to show patients and partners what they're truly made of.

"A crisis is not the time when you build relationships, it's when your relationships are proved out," said Chris Berger, senior vice president of communications at Advocate Health. Equally crucial, they noted, is the ability to stay flexible and communicate clearly when a crisis unfolds.

Dr. Robert Pearl, the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente and clinical professor of plastic surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine as well as a faculty member at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, noted that since you often can't predict what kind of crisis you'll face, it's essential to have not just a strategy, but also trust and confidence in your leadership team. To be able to respond quickly, he advised, you should also "know your values."

Press Ganey's Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips added that a "culture of high reliability" is essential as it ensures that everyone in the organization, regardless of rank, "understands what it takes to minimize harm, manage risk and respond nimbly when things go wrong."

Andy Puterbaugh, president of hospitals and health systems at Teladoc Health, emphasized the importance of "a well-understood activation process" and the ability to "triage" when a crisis hits.

During the panel, some of the experts reflected on past crises and how they responded to those situations, offering insight into their decision-making processes. Pearl recounted his experience responding to an earthquake, during which the medical center he was working at lost power and a wall began cracking.

"You have to make a decision on the spot," he said, adding that "our strategy was we wanted to be a quality and service leader…and patient safety comes number one."

This led him to call for the evacuation of around 100 patients, relying on an unrelated, pre-established plan that accounted for having to treat more patients than the hospital's capacity, involving the use of the back parking lot.

In terms of resilience to cybersecurity threats, Hamilton said, "More investment needs to go into detection and recovery rather than prevention." He identified three prevalent methods of people gaining initial access to systems: social engineering, credential abuse and vulnerability exploit. Hamilton urged health care systems to train workers, introduce a "strict credential policy" including passwords and "implement a policy of personal use on personal devices only."

Among other topics, such as legal protections and public-facing communication techniques, the panelists highlighted the far-reaching impact of health care and how it's intertwined with our political atmosphere. Pearl emphasized this point, saying, "almost nothing of significance that's going to impact our nation won't impact medicine." The health sector's broad influence is reflected in its economic footprint, with health care accounting for more than 17 percent of the U.S. GDP, according to the latest data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

One audience member asked the panelists about avian flu and the potential fear of another pandemic, seeking their insights on how to ease public concerns and communicate most effectively.

Compton-Phillips responded that there is "a lot to learn from what we did during COVID." Specifically regarding bird flu, she said, "I would put that into the 'known-unknown' category of what we can do to prepare."

She noted that hospital systems are now much better prepared and familiar with planning for personal protective equipment, isolation protocols, vaccine development and other measures.