FaithSearch Partners, Inc., the leading executive search firm focusing exclusively on faith-based hospitals and health systems, has appointed Edward Reifsnyder to head its new Accountable Care Organization (ACO) search practice. Reifsnyder, a long time healthcare leader and strategic consultant, will base the practice from the firm’s location in Fort Collins, Colorado.
“Edward is uniquely prepared to meet our client’s growing needs for strong leadership in the new era of physician-hospital collaboration,” said Ed Fry, FaithSearch founder and CEO. “With his recent experience in consulting in actual early ACO formation, Edward brings a perspective that will bring significant value to our clients during these uncertain times.”
Reifsnyder, who is a CPA and has a background as Chief Financial Officer for a large national health system, has consulted on strategic and financial projects with a number of major hospitals and systems across the country.
Said Reifsnyder, “We are moving into a new era in which there will be intense market demand for integrated care continuums that can deliver high quality care, cost efficiency and improved patient experience. Re-imagining and successfully altering the dynamics of healthcare calls for skill sets that will identify the leaders of the future. Those leaders will have a different mindset and will understand that managing systems of care with challenging interdependencies is crucial to success. At FaithSearch Partners, we understand the characteristics required to successfully navigate the new world, and can help our clients identify leaders for tomorrow.”
Critical skill sets for ACO executives will include:
~Systems thinking, vital to constructing well-coordinated care networks and population health management capabilities
~Collaborative leadership, required to bring together disparate and perhaps unrelated providers and provider entities into a highly functional care network
~ Inter-personal skills to handle successfully the dynamics among:
~leaders of individual providers, including hospitals, whose roles are changing as the ACO emerges as the entity that drives the top line and care protocols
~physicians who will emerge as powerful partners
~Focus on outcomes that may be foreign to traditional healthcare executives
~Vision-driven, and able to rally uncontrolled partners around a vision
~Able to build a new business model
~Tolerant of ambiguity as new business models unfold, but able to inspire people to move forward
~Understanding of, and preferably experience in, insurance and risk concepts, as well as population health management
“Examples of senior positions within an ACO that will require these skill sets include CEO, Chief Continuum Officer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Information Officer,” stated Reifsnyder. “All these may come from diverse backgrounds, but success in the ACO world will call for, at a minimum, these characteristics.”
For more information about ACO development and FaithSearch’s ACO practice, please contact Ed Reifsnyder at 817/821.4644 or ereif@faithsearchpartners.com.
