Like other health systems, Catholic Health in Rockville Centre, N.Y., must balance strategic priorities, workforce challenges and operational improvements in today’s industry environment. At the helm of these efforts is Patrick O’Shaughnessy, DO, MBA, who began his Catholic Health career as an emergency department physician and has served as president and CEO since April 2021.

Catholic Health, which includes six hospitals along with physician practices, multispecialty offices, imaging and ambulatory surgery centers, rehabilitation, home health and hospice care, is the third-largest employer on Long Island, with more than 17,000 staff.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Becker’s, Dr. O’Shaughnessy emphasized the central role of the system’s staff in its overall strategic focus.

“There’s a good deal of emphasis on operational performance improvement across the entirety of healthcare,” he said. “How can we do things better? But that all caps out at the point. There’s a limit to how much you can continue to optimize a model that is incredibly complex and in many instances stressed to breaking points in certain areas.

“So operational redesign of the chassis is critical going forward. It’s keeping all the balls in the air, but always starts with our people, and then thinking about our strategy, and are we pulling all the right levers? And then we need to continue to reinvent ourselves and pivot our organization so that we can continue to be here for yet another 100 years.”

Recruitment and retention

When it comes to building the workforce of the future, Catholic Health is focused on strengthening relationships with colleges and universities to boost talent pipelines — and on inspiring the next generation of women and men to pursue healthcare careers.

“Many times, people think, ‘Well, if I’m going to be going into the healthcare space, I need to be a physician or a nurse.’ Not necessarily. There are so many other critically important positions. I speak all the time on the importance — critical importance — of a team,” Dr. O’Shaughnessy said.

“What we realized is you’ve got to get generationally down the line and get really upstream of it, starting to cultivate those relationships with our high schools, and then building relationships with our colleges and universities. And not just for the nursing programs, physician assistant programs, but multiple areas.”

Dr. O’Shaughnessy said Catholic Health also invests in market wages and adjustments to salaries for existing staff, as well as in programs to help workers grow and stay at the organization. This includes educational support for employees to pursue advanced degrees or learn a different area.

“Perhaps they start out, as an example, in a med-surg unit, but they really want to be an emergency medicine nurse,” he said. “Well, we created our own residencies and programs so that they can facilitate additional training and move into those spaces.”

These and other efforts, such as a mentorship program for newer employees, have led to the best turnover rates Catholic Health has had in the last 10 years, back down to single digits.

OBBBA impact

Catholic Health’s workforce priorities will exist in the context of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a reality that adds complexity to efforts to maintain stability. The health system expects $37 million in lost revenue from increased uncompensated care tied to a higher uninsured rate.

“You have to begin to think about what those impacts would be on our already fragile financial ecosystem, which is, for the last 20 years in New York state, we haven’t been able to keep up on the reimbursement side,” Dr. O’Shaughnessy said. “Certainly on Medicaid; only in the last couple of years [have we] got some small increases in Medicaid. And certainly Medicare; for the first time this year, we can get a small bump on the physician rate, and we’ll see some improvements.

“But when you look at overhead and expenses that are generally double that each year, the math doesn’t work. So this comes at a time that the industry as a whole is under tremendous pressure, and I think it will create further challenges for the industry as we go forward.”

To address the headwinds, Catholic Health has looked at how it can create margin and optimize that to offset other losses the organization is expecting.

Among the questions it considers: How does the system redesign care? How can it move some care into more ambulatory environments? How can the organization better digitally connect patients so it is creating care that is more integrated and seamless, as opposed to episodic?

“So strategically, we are looking at how and where we’re going to be delivering services differently, with a big focus on ambulatory investments,” Dr. O’Shaughnessy said. “We have six hospitals. They’re all fantastic hospitals. But the impacts of the [OBBBA] — and [other pressures] — are putting strain on other areas within our industry. It doesn’t just affect capital. It affects our ability to … make other significant investments in our plants; if the cost of construction goes up, everything goes up.

“So while we haven’t made any significant changes in what we have planned in our five-year strategic plan, we are modeling out what the impacts would be from the building. We’re pivoting our services in some areas with greater emphasis on the ambulatory, short stay in other areas, and leveraging the hospitals for those [who] truly need it.”

The role of AI

Catholic Health also sees AI playing a significant role at the organization.

Dr. O’Shaughnessy said the organization’s approach hinges on using existing investments — such as EMR vendor tools or other technologies — and investing responsibly in best‑of‑breed technology to integrate and transform care.

“But with the ultimate goal: not replacing the human, but augmenting their ability,” he said. “For us, it’s augmented AI, not autonomous AI. We’re going to see tremendous investment in this space.

“There’s tremendous interest from private equity and venture capital in AI, because healthcare is so complex and costly, and there could be tremendous savings generated. Think of tests and therapies: We can get better insight earlier about what will be effective — help the patient avoid complications, unnecessary tests, risk and inefficiency.

“Overall, AI will help us create a better value proposition. You can’t bury your head in the sand on AI. You have to keep your head up, stay ‘blue chip’ and get ahead of it. We’re making those investments now in our IT and digital technology sector to keep leading deeper in this space.”

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