Youth no barrier for these healthcare executives

When the 35-year-old chief executive officer of University Medical Center was hired away last week to take a similar position at a St. Rose Dominican hospital, many people with ties to UMC called the situation an opportunity lost.

Lawrence Barnard is considered by many to be a rising star among health care leaders in Southern Nevada, and at 35, he’s the youngest CEO at an acute care hospital in the region.

Youth is not the norm in the C-suites of health care companies nationwide, but certain young professionals have distinguished themselves and tracked career paths to the top faster than their peers. The best example of that in Southern Nevada is Justin Schmiedel, the administrative director of Cleveland Clinic Nevada, who at 28 is a rarity as the overseer of the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.

Youth has its advantages in changing environments, and no sector of society is more subject to innovation and advancement as the shifting sands of health care. The gold standard of service in the hospitality industry, for example, looks pretty much the same today as it did 25 years ago. In the health care field, a sea change can occur on any given day. As new devices, drugs, procedures and therapies provide patients relief and healing, the rest of the industry follows suit.

“If you don’t change, you don’t stick around,” said James Kilber, executive director of the Comprehensive Cancer Centers of Nevada.

Managing the companies delivering health care to Southern Nevadans requires a familiarity with an integrated network including hospitals, managed care organizations, long-term care facilities, neighborhood clinics, labs, home health agencies and consulting firms. For the most effective health care administrators, their entire careers become learning experiences acquiring the resources to give doctors, nurses, technicians and therapists the ways and means to care for their patients. At Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, Todd Sklamberg, 50, commands a facility with 690 beds attended to by more than 2,800 employees.

The young professionals looking to provide that leadership are being trained in health care management programs in schools nationwide, including the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The best graduates entering the workforce are grounded in business skills with knowledge of clinical practices and medical terminology to thrive in the health care industry, said Chris Cochran, chairman of the UNLV Department of Health Care Administration and Policy.

“You now have this new cadre of very well-trained, very well-specialized professionals who might be more willing to embrace change,” said Dr. Thomas Schwenk, dean of the University of Nevada School of Medicine. “The field is moving very rapidly in terms of how care is reimbursed, how the quality of care is measured and how costs are managed today, and you have to be able to change to be effective. I’d hate to ascribe all of that to youth, but it certainly plays a role.”

Colleagues of Barnard’s at UMC say he was approachable and willing to listen to the ideas and perspectives of others. That contrasts with some incoming executives who have managed other facilities and have preconceived notions about how a facility should be run, insisting on methods and protocols that are ill-suited in the new assignment.

“That type of a person is going to come in with more of an agenda,” said Dr. J.D. McCourt, head of the adult emergency department at UMC. “A younger person will listen to the point of view of more experienced professionals. It’s definitely a huge benefit to have a CEO with that type of a mindset.”

JUNIOR EXECUTIVE PROGRAMS

Deborah Bowen, president of the American College of Healthcare Executives, said hospital CEOs usually are brought through junior executive programs offered by numerous companies. Barnard and his successor at UMC, Mason VanHouweling, 44, both are products of the Universal Health Services’ program in Southern Nevada.

Citing data from the American Hospital Association from 2013, Bowen said, only 215 CEOs in the group’s 3,600 member institutions were in their 30s. Only 12 were younger than 30.

Karla Perez, the head of Universal Health Services in Nevada, including five acute care hospitals in the Las Vegas Valley, became a CEO for the first time before her 40th birthday when she took over at Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center. Perez said the biggest challenge for younger executives might be the time demands when people are trying to raise their family. Hospital administrators can work 60-hour weeks at times.

Perez, now 53, remembers when she was the new kid on the floor.

“At one of my first inter­actions with a group of employees, one of them said, ‘You’re too young to be a CEO. It figures they would have given us a green one,’ ” Perez said.

Technology might be the biggest advantage incoming classes of health care administrators have over their older counterparts. Technology has touched all aspects of health care from electronic health records to robo­tics in the operating room to new ways for different providers to communicate with each other.

Kilber, 49, said one of his IT-savvy doctors, 39-year-old Antony Nguyen, is providing input from a clinician’s viewpoint as the company prepares to launch new software to chart medical records. At Universal Health Services, advertising executive Christine Beltran-Bittner was 37 when she had the idea for the Shaper Bariatric Surgery App, which allows users to upload a photo and see the results of pounds being shed from the body.

“I tend to see a lot of our junior executives focusing on social media and technology,” Perez said. “Those of us in the industry who have been around for a long time, some before computers were widely used, aren’t necessarily as attuned to the innovations that technology provides.”

SELECTION PROCESS CHANGE

The selection process for health care CEOs also has changed. In the 1960s, ’70s and into the ’80s, chief executives often were the ones with the most seniority. A CEO could be picked from some division of the hospital without a clear understanding of how the other divisions were run. Dr. Mitchell Forman, founding dean of Touro University Nevada, said that led to a “silo mentality” in which some departments were favored at the expense of others.

“That’s not the most efficient way to deliver patient care,” Forman said. “Breaking down the barriers to communication between departments is the key today in creating the collaborations, the partnerships and the sharing of information to make an institution successful.”

Dynamic teamwork is the goal at the Ruvo center where the Schmiedel has been at the helm almost 1½ years. He has long since lost track of the number of times that colleagues have told him, “I have kids older than you.” He’s quick to admit his rise to the top has been meteoric, but once he learned about the Cleveland Clinic, he knew where he wanted to work.

“I remember the first days of walking through the doors of Cleveland Clinic and seeing the type of care being delivered,” he said. “I realized how lucky I was to be working for such an organization.”

Schmiedel is engaged to Amelia Brown, 30, who is going through the Universal Health Services junior executive program at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center. They plan to marry in September.

“Anytime you’re a young person going into a field where the leadership is traditionally older, you have to go into it being humble,” Schmiedel said. “You have to listen. You have to show appreciation for the people who have the experience.”

Bowen, the college president, doesn’t expect a groundswell of younger executives occupying the corporate offices of health care companies but she acknowledges the opportunities exist for people willing to apply themselves.

“Things don’t really change that quickly,” Bowen said. “Can you find bright people at any age? Of course, you can. There’s a lot of experience out there, too, and that still counts for something.”

Contact Steven Moore at smoore@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4563.