CommonSpirit’s Lloyd Dean and Rich Roth on Solving Inequities through Innovation

CommonSpirit Health created one of the largest health systems in
the nation by merging Dignity Health and Catholic Health
Initiatives in early 2019. It now operates 137 hospitals and more
than 1,000 care sites across 21 states, with revenues of nearly
$29 billion.

Extending its reach into more communities across the country has
enabled CommonSpirit to leverage scale as a means to advance its
core mission of expanding healthcare access to all, advocating
for those who are poor and vulnerable, and innovating how and
where healing can happen.

If a person’s personal journey and early years are what guide
them to their calling in life, as CommonSpirit CEO Lloyd Dean
believes, it’s no wonder why he and SVP and Chief Strategic and
Innovation Officer, Rich Roth, are key parts of a leadership team
charged with seeing this mission through.

In this episode of Healthcare is Hard, Lloyd tells his inspiring
story of growing up the son of a factory worker who experienced
racial inequalities firsthand and saw the impact they have on
basic healthcare and life expectancy. He shares his personal
journey from being the first in his community to attend a
university, to becoming the CEO of one of the nation’s largest
health systems and how these experiences drive purpose in this
role. Rich Roth recounts his first exposure to the healthcare
industry cleaning doctors’ offices where his mother worked as a
receptionist, his later roles cooking and cleaning at nursing
homes, and ultimately his first job out of college stuffing
envelopes and answering patient questions in the billing
department of a hospital.

With the foundational influence of these experiences, Lloyd and
Rich talk to Keith Figlioli about their role in fulfilling
CommonSpirit’s healing mission and how it has changed in the wake
of COVID-19. They cover a number of topics, including:



COVID-19 as the great equalizer. Rich explains how
certain elements of a health system like home care, pharmacy or
community benefit have historically played a secondary role –
part of a strategy, but not leading it – and are now starting
to be central components of a system’s identity. COVID-19 has
revealed the true vulnerabilities in our healthcare system and
these are the things CommonSpirit is thinking deeply about to
create the next chapter of healthcare delivery. As Lloyd points
out, if we don’t see the inequalities now and address them in a
demonstrable way, history will chronicle that as one of the
greatest missed opportunities the nation has ever seen.


Personalizing care for individuals. The U.S. health
system has done a poor job personalizing primary care to meet
individual needs, according to Rich. For example, behavioral
health might be the primary need for some people while food or
housing is the biggest concern for others. And different groups
of people – women, seniors, Latinx, and many more – need more
services specific to them too. The next evolution of care must
move away from the “one stop shop” and will require services
that understand and better serve each person individually.


Being part of a community, not just “in” a community.
Lloyd shares his prediction that care delivery from health
systems, hospitals, clinics and other providers that currently
occurs IN the community, will transform to be a bigger part OF
the community. And providing a robust health infrastructure
with broad access to care will not simply be understood as a
moral imperative, but as an economic imperative as well.



To hear Lloyd, Rich and Keith talk about these topics and more,
listen to this episode of Healthcare is Hard: A Podcast for
Insiders.