By Pamela J. Gallagher

AI is here to stay. The question leaders must grapple with is how to embrace it wisely and with purpose.

From my vantage point as a financial executive in the healthcare industry, I believe virtual financial services offer tremendous value to organizations—to a point.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

I have been very fortunate with the bosses I’ve had over the years. On the whole, they have been people I respect and have been able to learn from. Who you work with—and for—can make or break a job. I have even seen colleagues whose entire careers have been upended by a terrible boss. Whether it’s a personality clash, a lack of management or leadership skills, or consistent issues with no improvement, how do you deal with a less-than-ideal boss, especially when you enjoy your work?

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Once, I was headed to a meeting where my team was in charge of providing dessert. On the way, I passed a bakery with a large chocolate cake in the window that was on sale. When I arrived at the office, I asked one of my colleagues to go get a cake from this bakery and gave him the money he’d need to buy the discounted cake in the window. When he arrived back from the bakery, he set down the carrot cake he had bought and told me I owed him $10. I questioned him about the chocolate cake I had seen on sale in the window display. It was only then I realized that I hadn’t told him which specific cake I wanted, only that I wanted him to get a cake from this particular bakery.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

During a recent conversation with a colleague who used to serve in the military, we discussed the instability of the past several years and how best to find a way forward. I shared that I saw the need for more collaboration as we try to effectively cope with all the changes we’ve experienced. He looked completely shocked by my suggestion! “Why on earth would you want to collaborate?” he asked.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

When you are hired into a position after someone has left the organization, my advice is this: Don’t speak ill of the departed! You may not find things in good order, or the way you would like to have left them. However, don’t take the low-hanging fruit of blaming your predecessor for every issue that arises, and don’t accept finger-pointing from your new team either. In my decades of experience, there is always more to a situation than meets the eye.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

In the midst of the Great Resignation, staffing is complete chaos. Across industries, organizations are rushing to fill vacancies so that customer service (and profits) don’t skip a beat. In the urgency of the moment, everyone is looking to hire permanent employees to replace the ones that resigned, but I think businesses would benefit from taking a pause to evaluate their true needs and rethink how they approach hiring.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

In my decades of leadership in healthcare, I have learned the hard way that not every person with a “C” in their title or who has been appointed to a board of directors understands what it means to lead.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Everywhere I see headlines about “The Great Resignation.” Many are pontificating about why people are leaving jobs or about unemployed individuals’ motivations for choosing to delay looking for a new position.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

It’s been 18 months since COVID-19 changed everything, and I am exhausted. We have endured tremendous loss as a society: loss of life, finances, jobs, routines, community…and the list goes on. Coping with uncertainty has become “normal.”

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Healthcare organizations spend tens of millions on sophisticated data collection and storage, yet it is hard to define what data is worth to an organization. What is its true value? This depends entirely on how the organization uses it. If an organization does not understand how to interpret and make use of their current and historical data, they will not optimize the return on this significant investment.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

For organizations and their leaders, the past year has been one of upheaval, intense challenges, and new opportunities. The word resilience has been on the tip of every leader’s tongue and the subject of many articles. The leadership of organizations that have been able to rapidly and repeatedly adapt or pivot as the world changed demonstrated that resiliency is the key to success.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

The need for strong leadership in the healthcare industry has come into stark relief during the pandemic. Good leaders shined, while organizations whose executives were only equipped to deal with the status quo struggled. COVID-19 has tested the abilities and skills of healthcare leaders. The ones who embraced uncertainty, had built strong teams, and lived by their personal and organizational values before the pandemic have led most effectively during this past year.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare professionals were making predictions about telehealth’s effectiveness and the possibility of its post-pandemic adoption (including me). Nearly a year after the rapid rise in telehealth usage brought on by the virus, we are starting to get a clearer picture of telehealth’s role in the healthcare landscape as we inch closer to post-pandemic life.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Hospitals and health systems have spent the past decade responding to patient and government demands for increased price transparency, and the demand only continues. While the healthcare industry has made strides in ensuring patients know the cost of their care up-front, consumer expectations are growing to include that hospitals should be able to explain how their costs are determined.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Patients have been begging for affordability for decades, and the healthcare industry’s reluctance to innovate and adapt to patient demands has left a door open for retailers to move into the healthcare business. I believe this will be great for healthcare, but potentially disastrous for health systems.

By Pamela J. Gallagher - In recent decades, many companies have adopted the maxim, “Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.” From the ability to focus on the core of their business to gaining outside expertise to boosting their quality of service, there are many reasons outsourcing may be appealing to an organization.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

Hiring an interim executive has long been thought of as a band-aid solution on the heels of an unexpected resignation or a way to give a potential new leader a trial run before committing. But with more businesses taking on flexible staffing approaches combined with the ups and downs of the economy over the past 15 years, companies have realized the financial and strategic benefits of engaging an interim executive rather than seeking to make an immediate permanent hire.

By Pamela J. Gallagher

In 2019, emergency departments (ED) across the U.S. saw an average of 2.1 million patients per week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over the past several decades, healthcare organizations have invested large amounts of money, time, and effort to study the trend of ever-increasing numbers of high-utilizers in the ED and discover solutions to slow this growth. Hospitals have offered care navigators, clinics for less emergent issues, and countless other alternatives, but with next to no progress. People, it seems, just wanted to come to the ED.