UPMC’s Davis ushers in a new era
CHANGING OF THE GUARD: CEO takes over at critical moment for hospital system
Leslie Davis — who once said she couldn’t be a nurse because she was afraid of blood — takes the helm Sunday of an international network of 40 hospitals with a personal style that defies the bareknuckled business tactics that made UPMC a medical giant with a global reach.
Ms. Davis, a 62-year-old New York native, takes over for Jeffrey Romoff, 75, as UPMC’s chief executive officer. Mr. Romoff is retiring after a 48-year career that began years before there was a UPMC, giving Ms. Davis’ tenure the stamp of a new era, both for the region and the health care powerhouse.
Most recently UPMC’s executive vice president and president of its Health Services Division, she takes over as CEO at a critical moment. Competition has never been more intense in the industry as the drive for cost containment has grown fierce.
But consolidation in health care — a wave UPMC rode for years — is drying up as there are fewer hospitals and doctor groups to swallow up. And there are struggles ahead as UPMC faces down criticism from politicians over its community contributions, confronts a simmering union organizing drive and tries to regain a coveted national ranking that has long been a marketing calling card.
Ms. Davis’ priorities, as laid out in an interview last week, don’t veer wildly into new territory. Continuing to leverage UPMC’s best-known brands in pediatrics, obstetrics and cancer care is among her goals. So is growing health insurance sales by developing products that complement medical services offered at an expanding array of UPMC hospitals.
Yet there’s little doubt that she’s bringing a new style to the organization. And that might open up opportunities in a different way.
Driving this new era at UPMC will be a suburban mother of three grown children who has the ease of a shared laugh with a backyard neighbor, someone who doesn’t think twice about bumming a ride back to the office from a public event with a co-worker driving an old Honda.
The most powerful woman in health care in Pennsylvania is also a seasoned hospital executive, with a graduate degree from Harvard University and a shrewd leadership style that management experts say has proven to be effective.
“I’m a transparent leader,” Ms. Davis said. “What you see iswhat you get.”
Changing of the guard
The diminutive Ms. Davis will need all the resources she can muster to manage the sprawling $23 billion UPMC empire, which employs seven times as many people as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, America’s public health agency.
If the early introductory phase is an indication, her approach to the job could not be more different than her predecessor’s.
Ms. Davis spent Wednesdayand Thursday in lengthy one-on-one interviews with reporters; Mr. Romoff’s media interviews were rare and often tightly scripted.
Ms. Davis said she anticipates “a very positive relationship with Highmark”; Mr. Romoff’s disdain for UPMC’s crosstown rival is the stuff of legend.
Ms. Davis is active in communityand professional activities — Carlow University President’s Advisory Council, United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania, the American College of Healthcare Executives; Mr. Romoff didn’t join clubs and only allowed himself to attend a few charity events each year.
Ms. Davis’ career path was rather unorthodox. In an interview with the PostGazette in 2005, she noted she hadn’t expected to work in the medical field. After earning a bachelor’s in Spanish-English education from the University of South Florida, she taught briefly at a middle school in Tampa, Fla., but didn’t enjoy it.
An administrative residency program at the New England Medical Center convinced her that health care was a better fit. Before coming to Pittsburgh, Ms. Davis worked in the New York and Philadelphia areas at organizations including Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
In the Pittsburgh region, she honed her management approach during 13 years as president of UPMC MageeWomens Hospital, which is best known in the region for welcoming more than 8,000 new babies a year. UPMC trimmed such services at hospitals elsewhere in the region and concentrated them in the Oakland operation, and Ms. Davis was tasked with dramatically broadening the facility’s services.
Highmark executives were sharply critical of the shift, saying Magee-Womens was exploiting its historical role as a specialty hospital that received higher reimbursement from the insurer for such routine things as emergency room care and joint-replacement surgery.
As Magee-Womens was expanding services, Ms. Davis made a habit of meeting with her 2,000 employees at their worksites, listening to their concerns.
She called the practice “intentional rounding,” a term rooted in the physician practice of going on rounds to visit patients every morning for updates on how they’re doing.
About three years ago, her “intentional rounding” was rebranded as the UPMC Experience and adopted as a practice systemwide. Its goal is to “create a culture where people want to work, where people want to stay here,” she said. “We take it seriously.”
Continuing to meet with employees in this way is a priority, she said, even though making it work for 92,000 employees across Pennsylvania and scattered across different countries will be a challenge.
Engaging with employees, learning about their concerns and working toward shared solutions is sometimes called “management by walking around,” said David Lassman, a professor of organizational management at Carnegie Mellon University.
Managers too often try to motivate employees with fear instead, he said.
“When you lead with fear, you end up with a bunch of yes people around, and that never ends well,” said Mr. Lassman, who teaches a graduate level course in evidence-based
leadership.
A collaborative spirit might also be useful in smoothing relations with Pittsburgh’s so-called bridge hospitals, smaller institutions that refer complex — and higher margin — medical cases to UPMC and Allegheny Health Network.
Relations between Pittsburgh’s big academic medical centers and the bridge hospitals have not always been smooth, sometimes devolving into turf wars for market share.
“They’ve already made a substantial contribution to the region,” Sharon Regional Medical Center President Bob Rogalski said about UPMC. “Scale is helpful: a lot of independent hospitals would like to see additional collaboration.”
He praised Ms. Davis, whomhe met in his previous role as CEO at Excela Health, as “very personable, very reasonable.”
No lack of challenges
UPMC’s workforce issues could become a distraction for Ms. Davis.
SEIU Healthcare Pennsylvania has been trying to unionize UPMC’s Oakland hospitals for years without a vote by hourly workers for representation. Such votes are usually scheduled when unions are sure of victory.
Politicians have baked the unionization effort into campaign slogans.
“Our health care sector should heal, not compound, economic injustices like occupational segregation, overwork and poverty, and our essential health care workers must have the ability to form a union, if they choose to, without intimidation or interference,” state Rep. Ed Gainey, the Democratic candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, wrote in response to Ms. Davis’ appointment to the top post Wednesday.
The nonprofit’s role in the Pittsburgh community — it is a massive employer but also enjoys tax exemptions that frustrate those who believe it should contribute more — will continue to be an agenda item for anyone leading UPMC.
Ms. Davis also is inheriting a 2-year-old truce in Western Pennsylvania’s health insurance wars after Highmark and UPMC inked a contract for services, capping years of bickering. But she also faces a newly energized Highmark, which has been bulking up membership by acquiring and affiliating with other Blue plans, wading into innovative approaches to home care and spinning out a for-profit business.
UPMC Insurance Services — which includes the UPMC Health Plan that generates more than half of UPMC’s operating income of $836 million — continues to face geographic challenges of a regional insurance plan that does not have the reach of national carriers.
Ms. Davis said she’s confident there is room for growth in selling health insurance by developing products that leverage UPMC’s dual roles as provider and insurer.
Maintaining clinical excellence may be high on the to-do list.
UPMC did not make the coveted U.S. News and World Report’s Best Hospitals Honor Roll for 2021-22, an anomaly for the health system that had made the list for 18 consecutive years. Such rankings are fodder for marketing campaigns.
Growth strategies
And then there’s the need for continued growth.
Ms. Davis last week laid out a strategy of accomplishing that by carefully selecting sites for what are essentially branch offices of UPMC’s best known brand medical services — Hillman Cancer Center, MageeWomens Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh among them.
For example, UPMC Passavant Hospital campuses in McCandless and Cranberry — an intensely competitive part of the health care market — are among the newest places where UPMC extended Children’s emergency care through telehealth links with the main hospital in Lawrenceville.
Bringing those brands to Erie and Harrisburg and elsewhere extends brand awareness, so the name Hillman, for example, becomes synonymous with quality cancer care.
In those many interviews last week explaining her vision for UPMC, Ms. Davis was careful to avoid comparisons with Mr. Romoff, the high-profile predecessor who led the organization for nearly half a century.
Instead, she kept the focus firmly on the future of UPMC that she’s been handed the power to shape.
“I can only look forward,” she said.