Doing the Right Thing, The Right Way
Richard A. (Rick) Norling
President and Chief Executive Officer
Premier, Inc.
Richard A. (Rick) Norling is acutely aware of healthcare’s broader responsibility as a social enterprise - a vision that has driven his nearly 40 years in the field. “Communities trust us to deliver quality care and accountability in an efficient and effective manner,” he explains. “What we do deeply impacts community health. Healthcare executives can lead change by identifying best practices, community by community.”
Part of the current issues in healthcare stem from the way healthcare has evolved in the United States, based on the very American values of entrepreneurship and individual responsibility. “Healthcare has moved away from its beginnings as a cottage industry to one with a significant economic impact now,” Mr. Norling says. “With costs much higher and huge gaps where people fall through, we still don’t have a comprehensive health system. Good individual efforts abound community by community, with pockets of excellence unrivaled in the world, but we have yet to unite the fragmented US system.”
A broadly experienced healthcare executive and frequent speaker on healthcare strategies, organizational development and quality management, Mr. Norling is president and CEO of Premier, Inc. Premier is one of the nation’s largest healthcare alliances, jointly owned as a shared resource by approximately 200 not-for-profit hospitals and health systems. They serve more than 2,000 not-for-profit hospitals and more than 54,000 other care sites.
With a master’s degree in system engineering, Mr. Norling first entered healthcare by helping to build the University of Arizona Medical Center. He later earned a master’s in healthcare administration. Over his career, Mr. Norling sees healthcare as a systemic challenge, pointing out that healthcare is compartmentalized due to regulation, conflicts of interest and a lack of clear progressive goals and priorities. To initiate substantive changes, Mr. Norling argues that healthcare must measure results, properly allocate funding where it would do the most good in the long term, and govern leadership to articulate, execute and break down barriers to care. But, “Chief among the changes needed,” he says, “is the need to replace our focus on episodes of care with systems of care, organized to meet the needs of patient’s at the most appropriate time by doing the right thing, the right way.”
Premier’s activities help members improve the quality, safety and cost-effectiveness of their core clinical care processes and to improve supply chain management, both of which have a significant effect on the cost and outcome of care. Premier’s services for healthcare organizations include: a group purchasing entity providing contracts for approximately $33 billion a year in healthcare supplies and equipment; healthcare informatics services, including comprehensive comparative databases for identifying performance improvement opportunities and benchmarking to improve patient care; insurance and risk management programs; and advocacy for the non-profit hospital community.
“With over 2,000 hospitals as partners and collaborators, we’ve demonstrated and measured quality and safety improvements that reduce mortality and cost of care,” says Mr. Norling of his dedicated team at Premier, which won the prestigious 2006 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Premier was also awarded the North Carolina Award for Excellence in 2006, and Forbes cited the company in 2008 as one of the most ethical companies in the United States. “Our results flow from using sophisticated management techniques and best business practices to further a very important social goal – improving the health of communities.”
Mr. Norling joined Premier in September of 1997, initially as chief operating officer. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of the Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services, which serves the people of Minnesota through an integrated system of hospitals, clinics and other service sites.
As CEO of Fairview, Mr. Norling served as a member of the board of directors of American Healthcare Systems (AmHS). Working as a board committee member, he was instrumental in shaping the 1996 merger of AmHS with the former Premier Healthcare Alliance (PHA) and SunHealth Alliance to form today’s Premier. Before joining Fairview, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of UniHealth America, a not-for-profit system of hospitals and healthcare organizations headquartered in Burbank, California.
Mr. Norling is involved as a member and leader in a number of professional, business and healthcare industry organizations. He is past president of the Board of Directors of the Malcolm Baldrige Award Foundation, and continues to serve on this board. He has continued to advocate the criteria of the Award as a foundation for effective leadership.
For many years, Mr. Norling was a member of the board of directors of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of healthcare throughout the world.
Mr. Norling earlier was a Visiting International Fellow at the King’s Fund in London. He continues to participate in and provide presentations for international healthcare studies. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the national cross-industry Healthcare Leadership Council in Washington, D.C., and he chairs the Council’s national task force working toward increased safety for patients receiving health services. Formerly, Mr. Norling was a member of the Board of Directors of Express Scripts, Inc., PacifiCare Health System and Blue Cross of California.
For his keen strategic management and demonstrated leadership of Premier, Mr. Norling is to receive the 2009 Mathies Award from Partners in Care Foundation at its Annual Excellence and Vision in Healthcare Leadership Tribute Dinner on May 4th, 2009, at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
For more information, contact Eva Goetz, VP Advancement, at (818) 837-3775, ext. 131; egoetz@picf.org
