Henry Ford’s Schlichting to receive Marketing Visionary award
Nancy Schlichting, the longtime CEO of Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, has been named this year’s winner of the Healthcare Marketing IMPACT Visionary Award.
The award, which Modern Healthcare launched in 2014 with sister publication Advertising Age, is given each year to an outstanding individual who has ethically advanced the public’s understanding of healthcare issues and made a lasting contribution to the industry. The winner must have consistently demonstrated the ability to communicate complex healthcare information in a manner that is compelling, reliable and responsible.
Schlichting will be retiring in December from the top job at Henry Ford, a role she’s held since 2003. She first joined the system in 1998 as senior vice president and chief administrative officer. A year later she was named executive vice president and chief operating officer. In 2001 she assumed the additional title of president and CEO of Henry Ford Hospital. In 2011, the system was awarded a Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a prestigious recognition of performance excellence and the leadership necessary to attain such success.
Throughout her tenure at Henry Ford, Schlichting has been well-known for her willingness to work with community officials, lawmakers and business leaders to improve access to quality and affordable healthcare.
A recent example of such service
was Schlichting’s appointment as chair of the Veterans Affairs Department’s Commission on Care. The panel was formed after the VA came under withering criticism starting in spring 2014 over long waits veterans had to endure to see physicians and amid reports of falsified information regarding the severity of the problem. The commission filed its final report in June, outlining in nearly 300 pages the steps the VA should take to improve care in the nation’s largest healthcare system, which serves 22 million veterans.
While Schlichting has used her highprofile roles to communicate the need
for change and transformation in the healthcare system, she also has participated in numerous community and professional organizations to spread the message and has served as a mentor and a passionate advocate for diversity in the industry.
In a book titled Unconventional Leadership: What Henry Ford and Detroit Taught Me about Reinvention and
Diversity, published this year, Schlichting sets out to share some tenets of management she discovered during her long career. “Over a span of 30 years, working at the highest levels of leadership and serving on corporate boards, my tendency to buck tradition has allowed me to see difficult situations for what they are and choose the right levers for making them better,” she writes.
The Marketing IMPACT Visionary Award will be presented at a dinner Nov. 9 in Chicago during Modern Healthcare’s annual Strategic Marketing Conference. For more information, about the awards program please visit modernhealthcare.com/impactawards.