Leadership Changes Reinvigorate Cleveland's Health Care Market

Originally published by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) as Community Report No. 1, June 2005.

New Leadership Reshapes Cleveland's Health Care Landscape

In January 2005, HSC researchers visited Cleveland, Ohio, as part of the Community Tracking Study, interviewing more than 85 health care market leaders. Despite Cleveland's ongoing struggle with significant job losses and a weak economy, the community's two major health systems, the Cleveland Clinic Health System (CCHS) and University Hospitals Health System (UHHS), had strengthened their financial positions and maintained market dominance.

New leadership at both institutions had played a stabilizing role. The new CEO of UHHS was credited with stabilizing the system's finances after a period of difficulty, and the arrival of new executives at both organizations sparked speculation about potential new market directions, including possibilities for increased collaboration across Cleveland's health organizations. After years of contentious rivalries between the two systems, the change in leadership opened the door to a more cooperative approach.

Health Plan Innovation and Consumer Products

Health plans in the Cleveland market had expanded their consumer-oriented product lines and programs but had not aggressively pursued providing patients with comparative cost and quality information on health care providers. This cautious approach to transparency reflected the competitive dynamics of the market, where the dominant hospital systems wielded considerable leverage in negotiations with health plans and had little incentive to facilitate direct price comparisons.

The Cleveland market encompassed Ashtabula, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, and Medina counties and was characterized by the strong presence of nationally recognized academic medical centers competing for both local and regional patients. This dynamic shaped virtually every aspect of how care was organized and delivered in the community, from physician practice patterns to insurance product design to the availability of specialty services.

Sources and Further Reading

Trude, Sally, Gloria J. Bazzoli, Jon B. Christianson, et al., "Leadership Changes Reinvigorate Cleveland's Health Care Market," Community Report No. 1, Center for Studying Health System Change (June 2005).