Emory realigns top leadership amid growing competition
Joon Lee, MD, joined Atlanta-based Emory Healthcare as CEO in 2023 and since then has engineered a financial turnaround, reorganized leadership to become a more cohesive organization, and oversaw the transformation of the first Apple-powered hospital.
Now, his role is expanding. Dr. Lee became executive vice president for health affairs of Emory University and vice chair of the Emory board of directors on July 1, responsible for the health science center’s research, training and innovation.
“It’s a natural progression. We believe it equips us better to deal with the current environment,” said Dr. Lee. “If you look at academic health systems across the country, there are hundreds of different formulations between the medical school component, faculty and healthcare deliveries, hospitals and physician practices in how they work together.”
Emory’s hypothesis is that alignment will create a virtuous cycle and fertile environment for innovation in basic science and care delivery. Dr. Lee envisions a significantly enhanced patient experience as Emory’s integrated model accelerates care coordination, digital transformation and personalized service across the organization..
“The reality is academic health systems in this country are complex, with the tri-partite mission of education, patient care delivery, innovation and research. It’s multifaceted and interdependent,” said Dr. Lee. “Our organization now has more than 30,000 people, and we aren’t even the largest in the country. How do we organize ourselves and ensure decision-making within the system is aligned as possible? By combining these roles, we can create the decision-making system for resource allocation, investing and creating the structures of the organization that will let us align to achieve our goals.”
Dr. Lee believes the leadership structure will allow his team to quickly consider all implications of changes and make better decisions. Under the previous structure, siloes made it harder for leaders to work together.
In addition to Dr. Lee’s expanded role, the system named Christopher Augostini. executive vice president of business administration for Emory University and CFO for Emory Healthcare and Emory University, as Emory’s new executive vice president and enterprise COO.
“The fact that we have a high-performing leadership team and operational side of healthcare all delivery allows us to come together even more within the physician leadership and academic leadership to make sure we’re as coordinated as possible,” said Dr. Lee. “It creates synergy. Our world is complex enough. How can we come together and structure leadership to minimize the complexity? I believe that’s where we are in terms of that trajectory and momentum makes this the right thing to do.”
Emory already has a legacy of innovation and recently upgraded its Emory Hillandale Hospital as the first Apple-powered hospital in the nation. The community hospital is testing grounds for expanding the technology and reflects a broader model of innovation for smaller hospitals.
“Breaking down the artificial barrier of where academic innovation starts and stops versus community-based innovation is important. We are really interested in innovation in care overall,” said Dr. Lee. “Those have to mesh – basic science is a broad spectrum, but health systems should be able to tie those together. Academic health systems exist to invest in innovation.”
The strategic decision to unify Emory’s leadership structure is also paramount to financial stability.
“The organizations that create a more aligned decision-making structure between the schools, research efforts, training and healthcare delivery, whether it’s still a corporation or private entity, will have more alignment around where to invest resources and create efficiency,” said Dr. Lee. “If you look at AMCs’ performance across the country now versus 15 to 20 years ago, the dispersion of high versus low are much broader now, due to the competition, volatility and the systems that are unable to align and create an efficient integration are going to struggle, because the competition from outside academics is getting stronger.”