HJNO Mar/Apr 2023

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS I  MAR / APR 2023 11 Greg Feirn serves as the CEO at LCMC Health, a nine-hospital system based in New Orleans of which he spearheaded the creation in 2009. As CEO, Greg provides strategic leadership to advance the system’s mission of health, care, and education beyond extraordinary. After 11 years in leadership at Children’s Hospital New Orleans, Greg focused his efforts on building a health system that could truly serve the diverse needs of the New Orleans community. As part of this vision, Greg served as the lead negotiator when Children’s Hospital acquired Touro and provided instrumental guidance and direction during the formation of LCMC Health. Under Greg’s leadership, LCMC Health has grown to include University Medical Center New Orleans, New Orleans East Hospital, West Jefferson Medical Center, and East Jefferson General Hospital. Today, LCMC Health has a workforce of 15,000 employees, including over 2,800 physicians throughout the six hospitals and more than 100 clinical and urgent care centers. Recently, Standard & Poor (S&P) affirmed LCMC Health’s A+ rating — the only hospital in Louisiana with the preeminent rating. Greg’s commitment to serve the industry has resulted in recent recognitions for his contributions to healthcare and the community. Greg was recently honored as a “Healthcare Hero” by New Orleans CityBusiness for industry achievements and community involvement. He has also been recognized as an “Executive of the Year” by Biz New Orleans, as well as named to the CityBusiness “Power 50 Most Influential People” list and selected as a CityBusiness “ICON.” In July 2022, Greg was appointed chair of the Louisiana Hospital Association. In addition, he also serves the New Orleans community on several boards, including Greater New Orleans, Inc., Metairie Park Country Day School, Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, and New Orleans Museum of Art. With Greg at the helm, LCMC Health has also earned the 2021 “Joy in Medicine” designation, has been named to the Forbes 2021 “Best Employers” list, and was identified on the 2022 “150 Top Places to Work in Healthcare” by Becker’s Hospital Review. Dianne Hartley, Editor Tell us a little about yourself — how you wound up in health- care and at LCMC. Greg Feirn I’ve been in healthcare for almost 30 years now. I worked for Deloitte Con- sulting out of Minneapolis doing health- care finance consulting. I took a job at Children’s Hospital in October of 1998, so I’ve been in New Orleans for a little over 24 years now — came up through the finance side of healthcare at Children’s and started as the controller. Then, through various positions, I became the president and COO when we acquired Touro in 2009. Prior to that, I was the CFO/COO at Children’s Hos- pital. We continued to grow after the Touro acquisition to our nine hospitals today, with about $3.3 billion in revenue and 14,000 employees. Editor How would you describe your management style? Feirn Open-door, certainly. Pro-employee and pro-physician — they’re what makes us great. All of our success is built upon what our employees provide as a patient experi- ence and how they support our physicians across the board. I’ve always had an open- door policy and conversational style. We all have a great privilege of caring for our community, and that shines through all of our people, and I believe it shines through my management style. Editor One of the more recent hats you’ve donned is chair of the Louisiana Hospital Association Board of Trustees. What are some of the important issues the associa- tion is working on, and how can you, as chairman, help implement them? Feirn As an industry, not just in Louisiana, we’re all focused on workforce develop- ment. Also, we’re acutely aware of the sig- nificant amount of inflation on the cost side of healthcare that we’ve incurred. We’re constantly working with the state around Medicaid reimbursement and Medicaid supplemental payments, making sure that the funding is there to provide the access that folks need in our communities. For LHA, the chairmanship is a one-year term. Really, as chair of LHA and working with the president, Paul Salles, it’s work- ing across different hospital and care pro- vider constituencies — whether that’s larger healthcare systems or rural hospitals, ser- vice district hospitals, or those facilities that are still standalone. Working together as a group, we can certainly accomplish much more than we could individually. Editor Is CMS’s wage index negatively impacting hospitals in Louisiana and LCMC Health in particular? Feirn I’d have to get a few more specifics. I think we’ll be looking for adjustments to the wage index. Ultimately, that accounts for inflation, but that’s a balance across all