2007 Mathies Award for Vision & Excellence in Healthcare Leadership Honoree: Lloyd H. Dean
CHW/Catholic Healthcare West
Lloyd H. Dean’s leadership of Catholic Healthcare West began with a vision. Yet his vision extends far beyond his first task of ensuring its critical financial stability.
Cherishing the Power of the Team
Six years ago, health care professionals across the country were watching San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West (CHW). Many were predicting its demise. The faith-based, not-for-profit hospital system had become over-burdened by layers of administration and operational inefficiencies that led to nearly a billion dollars in losses between 1997 and 2000.
Employee morale was low, and the financial markets had lost trust in the hospital system, which spanned California, Arizona and Nevada. The CHW Board of Directors knew that new leadership was necessary if the ministry of care entrusted to them was going to continue. The Board was very clear about one thing: the organization did not need a turnaround specialist. CHW needed transformational leadership. Their charge was to bring into the organization a new CEO who could organize a team that was passionate about patient care, employee satisfaction, and organizational values, yet could also make the hard decisions that would return the organization to fiscal health.
Lloyd H. Dean, a proven leader in healthcare, was selected to lead the organization as president/chief executive officer.
“Lloyd Dean is about transformation,” said Sister Diane Grassilli, a member of the CHW Board of directors at the time. “He’s about taking a ministry that is built on a certain set of principles and a certain set of values, and bringing those back to life. You do that through people, you do that through good leadership, you do that through building good teams, and by creating a strategy that is understandable and measurable.”
When he became president/CEO in 2000, Mr. Dean focused on the value and strength of CHW’s employees. As he explains, “We inverted the hierarchy of our organization. In everything we did we emphasized our front-line staff and the essential role they play in our healing ministry. To raise patient and employee satisfaction we set measurable outcomes and performance goals for ourselves and reached out to the people of CHW for their help and counsel.
Across CHW’s large, complex organization, our people came together and rallied around the vision. That made all the difference in transforming our organization and fulfilling our mission to provide quality care to those who need it.”
Recognizing and cherishing the power of the team, Mr. Dean’s open-hearted, collaborative, consensus-building, and communicative leadership style has supported CHW’s employees, volunteers and physicians in delivering care, measured against performance and quality metrics that drive an effective organization. He and his leadership team quickly put CHW back on solid financial footing, with all major bond rating agencies upgrading its bonds, significantly reflecting high confidence in the organization's present and future operations.
CHW’s clinical outcomes today stand well above the national average in the treatment of acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia as reported by the U.S. Government's Hospital Compare website. Today CHW is a vital healthcare ministry, strong in its mission and values, renewed through its vision and focus, with a new strategic vision based on growth, innovation and leadership.
Attending to Communities Served
Mr. Dean is responsible for the management and strategic direction of CHW's 42 acute care hospitals and medical centers in California, Arizona, and Nevada and for their ancillary services home health care and medical group foundations served by more than 44,000 employees and 7,600 physicians. He is keenly mindful of CHW’s role in supporting the communities it serves. Last year, CHW provided more than $465 million in community benefit and free care for the poor and uninsured as integral to its mission. With a strong personal commitment to providing health care to the underserved and to developing community health services and community benefits essential to its healing ministry, CHW partners with local nonprofit organizations that are working to improve the health status and quality of life of the communities it serves.
CHW's Community Grants Program helps communities to provide support for underserved populations, while CHW’s Community Investment Program provides expanded access to capital for underserved communities. CHW has invested more than $76 million in organizations providing affordable housing for low-income families and seniors, community facilities for child care and clinics among others, and in workforce development.
Providing Opportunities for Next-Generation Leadership
Mr. Dean’s leadership vision also extends to educating and training the next generation of healthcare executives as the legacy and ultimate responsibility of a CEO. Mr. Dean assisted in the formation of the CHW Learning Institute, which is dedicated to developing executive talent within the organization by recognizing, coaching, and mentoring emerging leaders.
Mr. Dean personally supports and mentors other healthcare professionals through his involvement with the National Association of Health Services Executives (NAHSE) and the National Association of African Americans in Human Resources and through the lectures he delivers in universities to young healthcare professionals and students. A common theme in these addresses is the need to deliver culturally sensitive care that meets the needs of all people.He frequently ends his lectures by calling on all students present, especially students of diverse ethnic backgrounds, to dedicate themselves to erasing the inequities in the provision of healthcare by serving in communities in need of culturally sensitive care.
Each year, minority college interns from INROADS/Northern California are placed at CHW to familiarize them with organization’s work and the field of healthcare. Mr. Dean regularly takes time from his busy schedule to meet with and mentor these students. He also serves as a valued role model and mentor to the healthcare executives who are part of NAHSE.
The Beginnings of an Admirable Career
Mr. Dean credits his parents’ profound influence by instilling in him a strong work ethic, the courage to create his own path, and the necessity of giving back through service. He is an alumnus of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, where he received his bachelor’s degree in communications and his master’s degree in education, served as an assistant in the School of Business at Western Michigan University and taught in the Kalamazoo public school system.
He is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University’s Executive Management Program.
Mr. Dean’s healthcare career began at the Upjohn Company where he held progressively more responsible management positions, including national vice president of sales for the Upjohn Health Care Services Division, where he was recognized with the W.E. Upjohn Award for management and operational excellence. Transitioning to healthcare system management, he served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Advocate Health Care, a faith-based integrated health care delivery system in Oak Brook, Illinois before joining CHW.
Talent in Service to Civic and Healthcare Communities
Lloyd Dean’s recognition as an inspiring leader reaches far beyond his work at CHW and in the field of healthcare. In both 2005 and 2006 he was recognized as one of the top 100 executives in healthcare, and in 2006 Modern Healthcare listed him as one of the top twenty-five minority healthcare leaders in America. Last year, Lloyd Dean was selected as one of the Ten Most Influential African Americans in the Bay Area. Mr. Dean is the 2004 recipient of the Community Service Award from 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, Inc. In 2006, he received the Humanitarian Award from the Bay View Hunters Point Family Resource Center in San Francisco, CA.
In 2004 Mr. Dean was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Commission for Jobs and Economic Growth. In November of that year he traveled with the governor to Japan as part of a state trade delegation, the only healthcare executive invited to participate in the mission. In 2006, he co-chaired San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Universal Healthcare Council and the San Francisco Health Access Program.
Lloyd Dean sits on the boards of the Catholic Health Association of the U.S., where he oversees efforts for Catholic health care in the United States, and Mercy Housing, Inc.
In June of 2005, he was also elected to the Board of Wells Fargo and Company, a diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers.
The Spirit of the Mathies Award Personified
For his insightful vision and performance-based outcomes in successfully leading and managing a major healthcare organization that is a model of care for its patients, staff and sponsors; for leading effective community partnerships; for his personal excellence in and beyond the field of healthcare, Partners in Care Foundation, his colleagues, and friends honor Lloyd H. Dean as the true embodiment of the spirit and meaning of the Partners in Care Mathies Award for Vision & Excellence in Healthcare Leadership for this year.
Partners in Care Foundation
