Latest posts
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Eric Cecava | Why the CEO Title Does Not Describe the Job
The CEO title in healthcare carries a certain image: strategic vision, board relationships, external presence, community leadership. Eric Cecava held the title at McLaren Port Huron from 2020 to 2026. His view of what the job actually requires is somewhat different from the image. Hospital CEOs are operationally accountable for everything that happens in their…
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Eric Cecava | The Specific Problems That Come With Running a Three-Site Health System
Running a health system with three sites is a specific operational challenge. Eric Cecava ran multi-site systems for years — first at Adena Health System with three hospitals, then at McLaren Port Huron with a hospital, a skilled nursing facility, and an integrated medical group. The problems that come with that configuration are specific, and…
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Eric Cecava | What a Skilled Nursing Facility Teaches You About the Rest of the Health System
Most hospital executives think of skilled nursing facilities as a post-acute afterthought. Eric Cecava ran one as part of an integrated health system and came away with a different view: skilled nursing teaches you things about health system operations that nothing else does. The skilled nursing facility in McLaren Port Huron’s integrated system was not…
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Eric Cecava | Why Operational Discipline in Healthcare Starts Before the Crisis
The crises that healthcare organizations face are rarely random. Eric Cecava’s view, developed over sixteen years of hospital and health system leadership, is that most of them are predictable — and that the organizations equipped to prevent them share a common trait: operational discipline built before the crisis arrives. Healthcare tends to respond to crises…
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Eric Cecava | What Community Health Systems Do Right
The dominant narrative in healthcare is about scale: larger systems, regional consolidation, integrated networks with hundreds of hospitals. Eric Cecava spent sixteen years working in community health systems, and he thinks the narrative is missing something. Community health systems — regional hospitals and multi-site organizations serving populations in the tens to hundreds of thousands rather…
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Eric Cecava | Why Physician Recruitment Is the Wrong Frame for Physician Relations
Most health systems describe physician recruitment as a strategic priority. Eric Cecava argues that recruitment is the wrong frame — and that conflating it with physician relations is one of the most common operational mistakes in hospital administration. The distinction matters because recruitment and physician relations require different things from a health system. Recruitment is…
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Eric Cecava | The Real Work Behind a Successful EHR Implementation
EHR implementation projects have a high failure rate and an even higher rate of implementations that technically succeed but functionally disappoint. Eric Cecava has been through one, and he has a clear view of why. Electronic health record implementation is one of the most complex operational projects a hospital or health system can undertake. It…
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Eric Cecava | What Manufacturing Experience Actually Teaches About Running a Hospital
Eric Cecava spent his early career in manufacturing before transitioning to healthcare operations in 2010. The people who expected that background to be a liability were wrong. The assumption in many healthcare circles is that hospital leadership requires healthcare-specific experience from the start. The logic seems sound on the surface. Hospitals deal with clinical staff,…