Eric Cecava

Capital investment decisions at community health systems carry long-term operational commitments that outlast the press release announcing them The announcement of a new facility, a patient care pavilion, a medical office building, an outpatient surgery center, gets covered in local news and presented in board materials as a success. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, who managed facilities expansion as part of his executive work at McLaren Port Huron in Michigan and in prior operational roles at Adena Health System in Ohio, has a different orientation toward these announcements. The capital decision is a starting point. The operational commitment it represents is what matters. Facilities Are Operating Commitments, Not Capital Events When a health system opens a new facility, it is committing to staff it, maintain it, equip it, and manage it for the functional life of the building. Those ongoing costs are not always as visible in the capital planning process as the construction co...

The population, economy, and physical landscape of a health system's market determine more about its operating reality than strategic plans typically acknowledge Healthcare strategy documents tend to talk about populations, market share, and service line development in terms that could apply to any system in any geography. The actual work of running a health system in St. Clair County, Michigan, is shaped by things that do not appear in those frameworks: the specific employment base, the age distribution, the distance between communities, the local economy's health, and the cultural relationship between residents and their healthcare providers. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, whose work at McLaren Port Huron brought him into direct contact with all of those factors, has a geographically grounded view of what health system leadership actually requires. The Community Defines the Mission, Not the Other Way Around A regional health system's mission to serve its communit...

Managing quality across multiple facilities exposes the gap between system averages and what is actually happening on the ground Quality in healthcare is often measured at the system level and managed at the facility level, which creates a specific kind of problem. The system-level metric looks one way. The facility-level reality looks another. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, who progressed from System Director of Process Excellence to VP of Regional Operations and Quality to Chief Operating Officer at Adena Health System in Ohio before taking on executive leadership at McLaren Port Huron in Michigan, has spent his career navigating exactly this gap. System Averages Hide Site-Level Problems When quality metrics are aggregated at the system level, what gets reported is an average. That average can look acceptable when one facility is performing well and another is underperforming, because the strong site compensates for the weak one in the aggregate number. That situation is inv...

Hospitals and medical groups require different management instincts, and most executives discover this at the worst possible time An integrated medical group is not a hospital department. It is not a collection of private practice physicians who happen to have an employment relationship with a health system. It is a distinct organizational entity that requires its own management approach, its own performance infrastructure, and its own leadership culture. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, whose operational responsibilities at both Adena Health System in Ohio and McLaren Port Huron in Michigan included integrated medical groups, has a clear view of what makes the difference between a medical group that functions well and one that is a persistent management challenge. Employed Physicians Are Not Hospital Staff The most common mistake health system leaders make when managing an integrated medical group is treating employed physicians the same way they treat hospital operations staff...

The jump from running operations to running an enterprise teaches things about leadership that the job description does not capture Most health system CEOs arrived at that title by way of a COO role, and most of them will tell you that the transition taught them something they did not expect. The work is different in ways that are not obvious from the outside. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, who served as Chief Operating Officer at Adena Health System in Ohio, then as COO and later President and CEO of McLaren Port Huron in Michigan, has a specific view of what that transition actually changes. The COO Owns What Happens Inside. The CEO Is Accountable for Everything. As COO, Cecava's accountability was operational. He was responsible for how the hospital functioned, how the skilled nursing facility performed, how the medical group was managed, and how quality and financial metrics tracked against targets. Those are significant responsibilities, but they are bounded. The oper...

Regional health systems that treat physician engagement as a recruitment function are building a problem that will surface years later There is a conversation that happens regularly in regional health system leadership circles about the physician shortage, the recruitment challenges, and the difficulty of building a medical staff that meets the needs of a defined geographic area. Eric Cecava of Fort Gratiot, Michigan, who managed physician recruitment and contracting at McLaren Port Huron across a three-county service area in Michigan, thinks this conversation is asking the right question in the wrong frame. The problem most systems have is not physician recruitment. It is physician relations. Recruitment Is a Transaction. Relations Is a Culture. A health system that recruits physicians well but manages them poorly ends up in a cycle: attractive offers bring people in, inadequate engagement drives them out, and the gap that existed before the recruitment process ended up back where it...