After four decades leading hospitals, physician enterprises, and integrated health systems across Louisiana and Texas, I have entered a new phase. I am no longer focused on building the next facility, expanding the next service line, or managing the next quarterly margin. I am focused on something larger. Affordability. Access. And sustainable system reform. Over the course of my career, I have served as a regional CEO of a three-hospital health system, and later as Senior Vice President overseeing 9 hospitals, more than 2,500 physicians and clinicians, and 8,000 associates within a multistate, faith-based health system generating over $1.3B in net revenue. The regional health system achieved superior operating margins, top-decile associate engagement, national quality recognition, and consistent patient experience excellence. We proved it is possible to do good while doing well. At the SVP level, we accomplished much of the same. Yet I increasingly found myself asking a harder question. Why are we not aspiring to lower the cost of health insurance for the people we serve? Healthcare leaders are evaluated on margins, growth, and market share. Rarely are we evaluated on whether the consumer’s premium went down. I believe three structural drivers of cost deserve greater attention: administrative costs, increased bureaucracy, and unwarranted variation in care delivery. These are difficult conversations. They are also necessary ones. Throughout my leadership tenure, I worked to influence cost structures through disciplined staffing models, supply chain optimization, revenue cycle performance, and development of alternative care pathways that reduced inappropriate emergency department utilization. Long before it became mainstream, I advocated for telemedicine as an access and cost lever. I remain deeply concerned about physician supply in Louisiana and similar states. Expanding residency and fellowship programs, aligning funding mechanisms, and tying training investment to in-state service commitments are solvable policy challenges. Hospitals cannot shoulder this alone. It requires coordinated stakeholder action. Today, I am pursuing selective board and advisory roles where I can contribute system-level insight, governance experience, and moral clarity to organizations serious about addressing healthcare affordability and workforce sustainability. I am energized by action, not talk. By inclusive, participative governance. By decisions that make a difference for those without a voice. Success was a privilege. Significance is now the goal.
