Successfully Leading Change in Healthcare Organizations

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Successfully Leading Change in Healthcare Organizations
Length: 1.5 hours
Target Audience: Department heads, vice presidents and C-suite executives
involved in leading organizational change.
Description: The healthcare environment is constantly changing, and provider
organizations must adapt in order to survive and thrive.
Organizations are frequently asked to respond to legislative
changes, market fluctuations, safety concerns, and patient or staff
demands. The success of major change implementation hinges
on how it communicated and how it impacts individuals and
processes in the organization. Stakeholders frequently resist
change for many reasons, including not having enough
information, fear of how the change will affect them, comfort with
the status quo, and not understanding the benefits of the change.
For change to truly be effective, a leader must know how to
effectively communicate the benefits, minimize the barriers, and
describe the processes. Learn from your peers as they share
approaches that were successful and those that impeded the
change process.
Faculty: Each session should feature a moderator plus two to three
panelists.
Moderator: The moderator should be a healthcare C-suite
executive who has experience leading a major organizational
change, such as reorganizing service lines, changing performance
criteria and measurement approaches, merging with another
organization, or implementing new technologies.

Panelists:

  • Ellen Thompson, MS, CPHQ, Chief Operating Officer, Western Wisconsin Health (moderator)
  • Robert Frediani, PhD, MHA, LNHA, Assistant Professor, Health Care Administration, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Meg Johnson, Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, VP of Learning and Organizational Change Management, Ellit Groups
  • Genevieve M. Schmidt, Senior Change Management Consultant, Sanford Health

Interactivity: All sessions must feature a minimum of 10 minutes of dedicated
audience Q&A time at the end of the session. Additional small-
group breakouts or discussions are optional but encouraged.
Presentation: An optional presentation template has been included for use if the
Chapter sees fit. If used, the presentation should include required
slides as designated in the template, and no more than 3
additional content slides.
Questions for Discussion:
• In your experience, what are the major drivers of organizational change?
• What are the critical steps in planning for any significant organizational change?
• How do you begin implementing the change process?
• Who do you involve to ensure that the plan is complete and addresses all parts
of the organization?
• How do you communicate the change throughout your organization? How do you
bring key stakeholders on board?
• Share examples of efforts that were less successful than you anticipated. What
would you have done differently and what did you learn?
• What were the key sources of resistance and how were they overcome?
• What advice can you offer about engaging physicians, nurses, and other clinical
staff in your change efforts?
• How did you access the feelings of the community about the change? How about
from patients and their families?
• What are the key costs of a change effort?
• How have you sustained the change over time in your organization?
• What is the most important thing leaders can do to advance successful change?
Materials for Distribution:
Qureshi, Nabeel PhD1; Hays, Ron D. PhD1,2; Slaughter, Mary Ellen PhD1; Talamantes,
Efrain MD3; Quigley, Denise D., PhD1. Provider Perspectives of Patient Experience
Measurement and Quality Improvement in Primary Care. Journal of Healthcare
Management 71(1):p 34-57, January/February 2026.
Allen, Robert W. FACHE; Cook, Dustin. Health System Venture Groups: Engines for
Innovation and Transformation. Frontiers of Health Services Management 42(2):p 13-
19, Winter 2025.