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Chief Healthcare Executive - Hospital & Health System Leader Insights

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Lee Barrett is the Commission Executive Director for DirectTrust

Given the significant risks associated with data breaches, accreditation provides assurance that an organization is dedicated to protecting sensitive information. 

Establishing trust in healthcare data security through accreditation | Viewpoint

Accreditation and certification programs can help organizations address gaps and demonstrate to other providers, partners, and insurers that they are serious about protecting healthcare data.

As cyberattacks and insurance costs grow, time is right for accreditation | Viewpoint

True interoperability of patient data has been a goal for decades. But any enthusiasm must be tempered by the security and privacy issues healthcare companies continue to experience.

Data security remains a challenge as interoperability moves closer to reality | Lee Barrett 

By 2050, it's estimated that 139 million people worldwide will have dementia, but by today's standards, 60% will be undiagnosed. It's clear that there's a significant gap in dementia detection and care, but what can your organization do about it?

Get perspectives from clinical leaders and neuroscience experts about the underlying causes and consequences of these gaps, practical opportunities to address them, and a proven roadmap that shows how leading health systems have successfully transformed their dementia screening and care processes.

Closing the Dementia Care Gap: Expert Insights and Proven Strategies for Health Systems

The smallest patients at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla now have a big new building.

The Scripps Health hospital in San Diego has opened its new North Tower, a $664 million building that has been in the planning stages for years. The eight-story building offers 188 new inpatient rooms, including 82 offering service for mothers and babies. All of the inpatient rooms are private.

Scripps Health officials say the new building offers expanded services for babies and expecting mothers, including 18 private labor and delivery rooms, 24 beds for neonatal intensive care, and 38 post-partum beds.

 for specialized services for the NICU unit, a partnership that has been in place for more than three decades.

Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of Scripps Health, says the new building represents “innovative collaboration among our exceptional physicians, nurses and hospital employees.”

“The North Tower is a cutting-edge medical resource, and it will be a place of healing for generations to come,” he said in a statement.

The first patients were moved into the North Tower from the campus’ Browning Building earlier this month. The tower also offers inpatient services for cancer, stroke, spinal injuries and trauma.

Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla unveils new, eight-story tower for moms and babies

Scripps Health hospital in San Diego opens new $664M tower

The new building offers more capacity for Scripps La Jolla, boosting its total bed count by more than 100 beds. The hospital now offers a total of 495 beds licensed to Scripps, and another 36 NICU beds licensed to Rady Children’s.

The hospital typically delivers about 3,200 babies annually.

Architecture firm HGA designed the 420,000-square-foot tower, which was meant to incorporate more collaborative spaces and allow staff to work more efficiently. Hospital officials said the building was designed to incorporate natural light and enable families to be as comfortable as possible. Patient rooms offer views of the mountains nearby and windows stretching from the floor to the ceiling.

Scott Laoboonmi, principal and senior project manager for HGA’s Healthcare Practice Group, said in a statement that the tower is among the firm’s largest healthcare projects in California.

“It was crucial that this tower was designed to be both efficient and consistent with Scripps’ campus-wide standards for care and comfort,” Laoboonmi said in a statement.

The planning and construction of the new tower took eight years.

Jane O’Donnell, MD, medical director of the Rady Children’s at Scripps La Jolla NICU, said more than 500 babes are admitted to the NICU each year.

“We’re so thankful for this beautiful new space to provide advanced, compassionate care for the smallest and most fragile babies that deliver at Scripps,” O’Donnell said in a statement.

Hospital officials also tout the building’s decentralized nursing stations, that allow nurses to be more accessible to patients and families. Each floor also offers lobby space for families to relax, while still being close to loved ones in their rooms.

The new tower marks another step in a 25-year plan to transform the La Jolla campus. Scripps Health is undertaking other ambitious plans. 

The hospital is planning to build a new, $1.2 billion medical complex

, featuring a hospital and an ambulatory facility on a 13-acre site in San Marcos, about 35 miles from San Diego.

Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla’s new, 8-floor building is designed to provide better care for moms and babies. The building also expands the hospital’s bed count.


Topic

Scripps Health hospital’s new $664M tower is now open 

The audience of Chief Healthcare Executive® has grown substantially over the past few years, and we’re receiving more requests for contributed pieces.

That’s fantastic. We want to provide more perspectives and ideas on the pressing issues in health care. Ideally, we hope to share some solutions to big problems.

We’ve published a host of opinion pieces from healthcare leaders over the last couple of years. These features, which are labeled as “Viewpoint”, have generated strong readership. And we relish the chance to bring different ideas and strategies to Chief Healthcare Executive®, as we strive to be an indispensable resource for leaders in the industry.

Here’s a guide to submitting contributed pieces.

This is the most important rule, and it’s non-negotiable. Contributed features must be non-promotional and vendor-neutral, avoiding any overt or subtle promotion of specific companies or products.

For example, we would welcome a contributing feature on a topic such as digital health and expanding more access to patients. But we won’t accept a feature that touts one company above others. That would be a promotional piece.

An important note: Chief Healthcare Executive offers sponsored content opportunities for promotional material. Our sales team would be happy to talk to you about sponsored content opportunities.

Our “Viewpoint” features should be written in a clear, conversational style. It’s always a good idea to write in the way people talk.

Avoid using jargon that may be common in one area of the healthcare ecosystem, but may not always be understood by a wider audience. Go easy on the acronyms.

Chief Healthcare Executive enjoys a broad audience, which goes beyond clinicians. If you’re a doctor or nurse, remember that many readers aren’t caregivers. If you’re a healthcare technology leader, don’t assume everyone knows about every type of software.

Chief Healthcare Executive follows Associated Press style. We don’t use footnotes, but it’s a good idea to link to studies or news stories that are relevant.

Viewpoint pieces should be around 600-700 words. That’s not a hard limit. If a story reads well and is relevant, it can be a bit longer.

However, if a submitted piece is more than 1,000 words, there’s a good chance it will be sent back with a request to cut it down.

Healthcare leaders are busy. So it’s better to be concise.

The most successful “Viewpoint” pieces focus on specific problems or challenges in the industry, and offer suggestions or strategies in dealing with those issues.

It’s also good to think about solutions that can be applied to organizations of all sizes. Some smaller hospitals won’t have millions of dollars to address a need.

Chief Healthcare Executive primarily serves the leaders of hospitals and health systems. Obviously, health systems include physician practices, primary care, outpatient facilities, and insurance plans.

But we are focused on the hospital industry. Think of reaching that audience.

We don’t want pieces created by AI. We expect contributed features to be written by human authors.

We understand if contributors are using AI tools to assist in research or spur ideas. But we’re only taking articles from real people.

If a contributed piece questions conventional wisdom or criticizes legislation or health policy, that’s fine. However, we’ll reject pieces if they include character assassination or rude language. Be civil, not snarky.

We typically include a photo of our contributing authors, and a very short description of the author at the end (Example: Jane Doe is CEO of Metropolis Health).

Now that we’ve reviewed the guidelines, let’s make it clear that we want more contributed pieces.

If you’ve found success in tackling a problem, or want to weigh in on legislation, regulation, or any issue you think is important, write to us.

We love hearing from hospital executives, but we want to hear from doctors, nurses, financial officers, technology leaders, and anyone from the healthcare ecosystem.

And we also hope to have a diverse mix of ideas, opinions and voices. If you’re representing a group or community that may be underserved or struggles to be heard, please reach out to us so we can amplify those voices.

And while I love the image of the vintage typewriter accompanying this guide, you should send your contributed pieces via email.

Send them to me: rsouthwick@mjhlifesciences.com.

We welcome opinion pieces on important issues affecting hospitals, clinicians, and patients, but there are some guidelines. Here’s what you need to know.

Want to submit a contributed article to Chief Healthcare Executive? Here’s how. 

Health systems increasingly turn to centralized fulfillment to meet rising demand, reduce costs, and free up pharmacists for patient care. This whitepaper outlines 10 critical RFP questions to help pharmacy and operational leaders evaluate vendor fit. Topics include fulfillment model selection, scalability, pharmacist verification models, software integration, implementation support, and long-term compliance. It’s a must-read for any health system preparing to modernize its pharmacy infrastructure.

10 Critical RFP Questions for Choosing a Centralized Fulfillment Partner

 - The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is operating a virtual nursing program to help patients navigate their hospital stay, and also offer some assistance to nurses working on the floor with patients.

Lavonia Thomas, nursing informatics officer at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive® at the HIMSS Conference about the virtual nursing program, its growth, and some promising results. She also offered advice for other hospitals looking at virtual nursing. Here’s a portion of our conversation.

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center sees success with virtual nursing

MD Anderson Cancer Center and virtual nursing

Q: Can you talk about the virtual nursing program at MD Anderson Cancer Center?

A: “So our virtual nursing program launched in April of 2023. We started out with one demonstration unit, and we worked one workflow, which was the admissions of patients. Since then, we have spanned across our entire medical and surgical cohort of units, and we've introduced virtual nursing into our emergency room for patient admission workup.

“We started with five nurses. We are now at 16 virtual nurses, all with a tremendous amount of oncology nursing experience from MD Anderson. We are continuing to scale this effort. We will be moving into our hematology units, and we're also having some discussions with our ambulatory treatment center to adopt some workflows in that area.”

Q: And you're encouraged by the results you're seeing so far with virtual nursing?

A: “Extremely encouraged. Our feedback from our frontline nurses has been extremely positive. We have utilized their feedback to continue to augment our workflows and make any changes that we need to and our patient feedback, as we have talked to them anecdotally, has been extremely positive about their interaction with the virtual nurses.”

Q: What advice would you offer other hospitals looking at virtual nursing?

A: “There are opportunities to improve the efficiency and to support our nurses at the front line. I would advise anyone not to allow a lack of technology or what they see as a lack of resources to hold them back from looking at what could be done around this virtual space. Many organizations have been very creative about introducing virtual nurses to that work space, and I would encourage folks to start where you are at.”

Lavonia Thomas of MD Anderson talks about the program’s growth, encouraging early results, and advice for others looking at virtual nursing.

MD Anderson Cancer Center and virtual nursing | HIMSS 2025

Kettering Health is grappling with a cyberattack that is disrupting patient care and other key functions.

 that it has experienced “a cybersecurity incident resulting from unauthorized access to our network.” The incident has caused a “system-wide technology outage,” Kettering says. 

 are reporting that Kettering has suffered a ransomware attack.

Kettering said Tuesday that it has postponed elective surgeries at hospitals and procedures at outpatient clinics. Kettering says it will provide more information about when those surgeries will be rescheduled. The system, based in Dayton, Ohio, operates 14 medical centers and more than 120 outpatient clinics.

While Kettering has postponed surgeries, the health system says its emergency rooms are open and receiving patients. Ambulances are being diverted, the Daily News reports. Kettering’s clinics are open.

Kettering said on its website that its call center has experienced an outage, among the disruptions.

Adding to the problems, Kettering Health says patients are getting “scam calls” from individuals claiming to be representatives of the health system. The callers are demanding payments for services. Kettering said it hasn’t confirmed that the “scam calls” are tied to the system-wide outage.

“We have confirmed reports that scam calls have occurred from persons claiming to be Kettering Health team members requesting credit card payments for medical expenses,” Kettering said on its website.

Kettering Health says employees typically call patients to get payments for bills, the health system says it’s suspending such calls for the time being. The health system encourages anyone getting such calls to report them to law enforcement.

The health system says it’s working to contain the damage and is continuing to investigate the attack.

More hospitals and health systems, along with other organizations that have health data, have suffered cyberattacks in recent years. 

Three out of four Americans were affected by breaches of private health information

Cyberattackers are demonstrating more technical proficiency in their attacks, Steve Cagle, the CEO of Clearwater, a cybersecurity firm, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in a recent interview.

“The attacks are becoming much more sophisticated,” Cagle says.

Ransomware gangs are using artificial intelligence to craft better phishing emails, and they’re also using AI to gather intelligence on companies that they’re targeting.

“You can gather information on a company using artificial intelligence,” Cagle says. “You can write the ransomware, by the way, or write the code … if you're doing a phishing campaign, you can use AI to help support that. You could use it to write the malware.”

The Dayton Daily News reported that hackers are threatening to publish private health information and destroy data if Kettering Health doesn’t negotiate within 72 hours.

Ransomware gangs routinely target hospitals because they have private health information which can be sold on the dark web, and 

because hospitals will often pay to restore their systems and care for patients

A ransomware group’s attack on UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare last year proved to be t

 the healthcare industry has ever seen. UnitedHealth said 190 million Americans were affected, and hospitals and medical groups around the country faced disruptions and financial losses from the attack.

Even as some ransomware groups seek big paydays, they are willing to negotiate on their demands. Andrew Carr, a ransomware negotiator for Booz Allen, told Chief Healthcare Executive® that some attackers hold firm on demands, but others will take less than they initially sought.

“Early on, there were a lot of hard-nosed threat actors,” Carr says. “But they've realized that some money is better than no money. So they often will negotiate.”

What it’s like to negotiate with ransomware gangs

Ransomware groups are more likely to negotiate if their attacks were less successful than they expected, Carr said. He also stressed the importance of hospitals developing strong cybersecurity defenses and robust response plans in case they are attacked to minimize disruptions.

CHE cybersecurity panel: How hospitals can protect their patients, and their systems


The Ohio-based system says its call center was affected and customers are getting calls from individuals claiming to work for Kettering and seeking payment.


Lee Barrett

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