Successful leadership built on relationships and connection leads to superior patient care

Whether it’s a hospital or a business, both face some of the same challenges. Tariffs, higher costs and difficulty keeping good people are across the board. The approach might be different but the end goal is the same: making the patient or customer No. 1. 

“Most hospitals have an excellent playbook and we have consultants advising us on where to pivot,” said Lakeview Hospital CEO Troy Wood. “Most businesses also have a great playbook. The question is, why do some succeed at execution and why do most fail? It’s engaging your people. We know what to do, but why do some do it and others don’t? This comes down to relationships.”

The key to managing change and solving problems is engagement, he said. “When people are engaged, it leads to superior patient care.”

Leadership is all about relationships, Wood said. “When relationships are strong then the leader can share the vision and set goals. Only then will that matter because the team is buying into the vision because it’s being set by someone they trust.”

Trust is built when leaders see their people as people, not cogs in a wheel or objects, he said. “At Lakeview, we do not have an organizational chart. We have a ‘Chart of Supporting Relationships’ where the patient is at the top, not the CEO.”

The CEO is at the bottom, supporting the immediate team that supports the larger team that then supports the patients at the top, said Wood. “When they’re all collaborating and working together rather than conflicting and fighting for resources, then we can stay focused on what matters: the patient.”

If they understand those needs, the objectives and the challenges that the other department has, they can jump in to help them, which ultimately helps their department achieve goals as well, he said. “So that to us is building this team whose ultimate responsibility is to the patient.”

Health care is changing rapidly. Some of the trends Wood sees in health care are:

Value over volume: Payers and providers are aligning around outcomes and quality, not just procedures.

Technology-enabled care: Telehealth remote monitoring and AI-driven diagnostics are becoming the standard rather than supplemental.

Workforce well-being: Focus on burnout prevention, flexible staffing models and supporting caregivers is becoming just as important as patient care.

With growth comes challenges. Wood said he is facing some of the same problems as businesses:

Staffing shortages: Nursing and specialty shortages remain the No. 1 challenge. Recruiting and retaining talent, while managing burnout, is critical.

Financial pressures: Rising costs for labor, supplies and pharmaceuticals while reimbursement often lags behind.

The One Big Beautiful Bill is not kind to health care in general, he said. “There are major reimbursement cuts coming. We have always been cost-conscious but this will take it to another level.”

Behavioral health demand: Hospitals are caring for more patients with behavioral health needs. “Lakeview has two psychiatric units that service our 18-plus population, inpatient detox services, ECT and an outpatient mental health and substance abuse therapy program.”

Aging infrastructure: Many hospitals need capital investments in technology and facilities to keep up with modern medicine.

Wood sees new innovations in the industry on the horizon and some are already here. “Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics help clinicians spot problems earlier, streamline documentation and improve workflows,” he said. “Minimally invasive procedures are allowing patients to recover faster, reduce length of stay and return home more quickly.”

There’s a lot of technology coming that has enhanced care, said Wood. “Some of it could be implemented immediately today but won’t because there’s a lot of regulatory factors that would go into them.”

There’s a lot of AI that could immediately transform health care, he said. “There’s elements of health care already being supported by AI but when the regulatory bodies approve certain things you’ll see it really take off.”

For example, a patient can go to a physician’s office today and they might have their cell phone in their pocket, said Wood. “If you notice it there, you could ask, ‘Oh, is that helpful to your medical record?’ And the answer would be, ‘Yes, this transcribes our conversation in AI.’”

It takes the conversation and it creates a diagnosis, he said. “The doctor has to confirm it. It’s not like AI is going to finish it off. It decides ‘OK it looks like we’re aiming at this. The patient’s follow-up needs to be this.’”

When the doctor leaves the office or that particular room, they can go to the computer and check that it’s right instead of creating it, he said. “That might be 15 more minutes in that doctor’s day, they can see that many more patients and the accuracy is phenomenal.”

That’s not happening in hospitals yet, said Wood. “It will. Where a nurse spends a great deal of their time charting, they could walk out of a patient’s room and not have to worry about that part. That’s amazing. They can go onto the next patient so that’s definitely on its way and I hope sooner than later.”

Other advancements in patient care include:

Patient-centered design: More hospitals designing care models around the patient journey — from ER through discharge — to reduce stress and improve safety.

Enhanced imaging and cath lab technology: Lakeview is purchasing the new Philips Azurion cath lab, a $2 million investment to bring state-of-the-art technology locally.

Interdisciplinary care teams: Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, therapists working more collaboratively to improve outcomes.

Everything the hospital does is for the patient, said Wood. “When everyone shares a common goal, which is to care for our patients like our closest loved ones and to focus on the care and improvement of human life, we are able to execute our strategies which ultimately result in measurable success.”