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WHITE PAPER: Creating the Healthy Hospital: The Demand for Physician Executives

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CHICAGO and ST. LOUIS, July 26, 2005 - Developing leadership from within their organizations is a winning strategy for the nation’s high performing hospitals. Chief executive officers of top national benchmark hospitals are more likely to be promoted from within, have more operational experience and reach higher levels of education than their counterparts at other hospitals. Likewise, they more often promote others from within to form their senior leadership teams; where members similarly have more operational experience and are more highly educated.

These and other findings were released today in the 2005 Hospital CEO Leadership Survey conducted in partnership by Cejka Search and Solucient®. The Survey, completed by more than 100 hospital CEOs, was designed to identify their characteristics, leadership team composition, organizational performance and future strategies for success, and contrast the findings between those identified as “best of breed” and “median” performers. The entire report of Survey results can be found at: www.cejkasearch.com/ceosurvey.

“Competition for the CEO job in a hospital is fierce," said Carol Westfall, president of St. Louis-based Cejka Search. “This new, research-based intelligence about CEO characteristics and practices is intended to build the industry’s knowledge and help hospital boards build high performing teams.”

"The Survey represents the first formal step into evidence-based management research,” said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president of the Center for Healthcare Improvement at Evanston, Ill.-based Solucient. “Our findings show that CEOs in consistently high performing hospitals place different emphasis on evaluating organizational success and defining future success. They are preparing differently for the future.”

Cejka Search and Solucient surveyed CEOs in two distinct categories:

1. Best of Breed hospitals, which are winners of Solucient’s 100 Top Hospitals®: National Benchmarks for Success award three times or more in the last five years
2. Median hospitals, which scored in the third quintile over the last five years and have not won a 100 Top Hospital award in the past five years.

Major categories of exploration in this Survey include: CEO characteristics, leadership team composition, organizational performance and future strategies.

Other key findings revealed in the Survey are more subtle than obvious:

• The chief medical officer is a member of the top leadership of more Best of Breed hospitals, but Median hospitals are catching up, adding CMOs to their top leadership team at a faster rate.
• Both groups monitor many of the same critical indicators for operational performance. Best of Breed hospital CEOs rank clinical outcomes and financial outcomes as nearly equal in importance. Median hospital CEOs rank clinical care processes significantly higher than do Best of Breed hospital CEOs.
• Ninety-eight percent (98%) of Best of Breed hospital CEOs monitor national benchmarks as their most common level of data for performance improvement and are significantly more likely to monitor local benchmarks.
• Nearly every hospital surveyed includes a chief nursing officer in their top leadership teams, but more Best of Breed hospitals have adopted nursing strategies such as Magnet status, shared governance and pay for performance.

“The Survey reflects, in quantifiable and objective terms, many of the same CEO characteristics that our experience has shown to be most important to hospital boards,” Westfall noted. “The top three areas:

1. Experience and results, a proven track record that includes a history of building and sustaining successful leadership teams
2. Operational strength and compatible strategic focus on key success factors
3. Exceptional ability as a leader who can articulate the vision and serve as the mission-keeper and moral compass of the organization

For the past 12 years, Solucient has used a national, comparative, balanced scorecard approach to set the standard for identifying top performing hospitals across the country through its 100 Top Hospitals®: National Benchmarks for Success studies and awards. "Our partnership in this Survey is part of our goal to provide the healthcare industry with better business tools and scientific processes to define and measure organizational management," Chenoweth said.

About Cejka Search and Solucient

Cejka Search is a nationally recognized executive and physician search organization providing services exclusively to the healthcare industry for nearly 25 years. Partnering with organizations in pursuit of the nation's best healthcare talent, Cejka Search completes over 500 assignments annually across all levels of the healthcare continuum. Cejka Search is a wholly-owned subsidiary of publicly-held Cross Country Healthcare Inc, a leading provider of healthcare staffing services in the United States. For more information, visit www.cejkasearch.com.

Solucient® is an information products company serving the healthcare industry. It is the market leader in providing tools and vital insights that healthcare managers use to improve the performance of their organizations. By integrating, standardizing and enhancing healthcare information, Solucient provides comparative measurements of cost, quality and market performance. Solucient’s expertise and proven solutions enable providers, payers and pharmaceutical companies to drive business growth, manage costs and deliver high quality care. For more information, visit www.solucient.com.

For more information, contact Kupper Parker Communications at 314-290-2000.