WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2024 — The Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO was presented today at The Leapfrog Group’s annual meeting. This year’s recipient is Mr. Richard A. Anderson, President and CEO of St. Luke’s University Health Network, a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites in central eastern Pennsylvania and western New Jersey.

The award was created by Costs of Care, a leading nonprofit dedicated to cultivating change agents who will lead the creation of a more affordable and equitable health system, in conjunction with The Leapfrog Group, the nation’s leading advocate for patient safety and transparency. The award recognizes a hospital and/or health system CEO who has demonstrated courageous and ethical leadership addressing the twin issues of affordability and quality of health care in their community.

Leah Binder, President and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, stated, “We are proud to honor Richard Anderson at St. Luke’s with this year’s award. He has dedicated his career to putting patients first and truly leads by example. As a result, St. Luke’s Health System is a beacon of excellence showing the lifesaving power of great leadership.”

“This award is aimed at inspiring ethical leadership among U.S. healthcare CEOs, showing that as a profession we can commit to practices that do not force patients to choose between their life and their life savings,” said Chris Moriates, MD, Executive Director of Costs of Care.

The Outstanding Healthcare CEO award is named in honor of Steven Schroeder, MD, Distinguished Professor of Health and Health Care at the University of California San Francisco and former President and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Schroeder has spent five decades inspiring and mentoring leaders to forcefully advocate for better quality and more affordable healthcare, and he has inspired leaders of both Costs of Care and The Leapfrog Group.

Dr. Schroeder stated, “Richard Anderson has provided inspired leadership through his community stewardship of the St. Luke’s University Health Network. During his almost four decades at the helm of the Network, Anderson has achieved an extraordinary record of service to the community, innovative health professional education programs, patient safety, indigent care, and cost-effective performance. As a result, the St Luke’s Network has been consistently recognized by multiple national organizations and has enjoyed high levels of employee satisfaction. At a time when many healthcare systems are struggling, Anderson demonstrates that a health care leader can both do well and remain fiscally viable. He is truly an inspirational leader.”

Under Mr. Anderson’s four decades of leadership, St. Luke’s has undergone a remarkable transformation from a single community hospital to an expansive, integrated 15-campus system. He oversaw the creation of the region’s first and only medical school campus, in partnership with the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, so students could receive their training locally. He also led the resurgence of St. Luke’s School of Nursing, the oldest continuously operated nursing school in the nation. These initiatives established a critical recruitment pipeline enabling St. Luke’s to expand to meet growing demand for services despite a national health care worker shortage.

Throughout the Network’s growth, Mr. Anderson elevated quality and affordability, along with access to care, to the forefront of the Network’s culture. Today, St. Luke’s consistently earns more major awards and recognitions for quality and safety than any other health system in the country. In the past year alone, the Network has earned the following:

• Leapfrog A grades at all 11 eligible acute care St. Luke’s hospitals
• Leapfrog Top Hospital designations at five SLUHN hospitals
• CMS Hospital 5-stars ratings (the highest) at 10 hospitals
• PINC AI 100 Top Hospital Award (12-time winner, 10 years in a row, #13 ranked Major Teaching Hospital).

“The Leapfrog Group standards make St. Luke’s better, and the beneficiaries of our consistently outstanding quality performance are St. Luke’s patients,” Anderson said. “I am grateful, through St. Luke’s, to be recognized with this prestigious national award, the 2024 Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO. I am privileged to accept this award due to the efforts of all our employees, their teamwork and the culture of St. Luke’s.”

This year marks the 7th annual Steven Schroeder Award for Outstanding Healthcare CEO. Past recipients of the award include Mr. Charles Holland, President and CEO of St. Bernard Hospital in Chicago; J. Stephen Jones, MD, President and CEO of Inova Health System in Northern Virginia; Joanne M. Conroy, MD, CEO and President of Dartmouth Health in New Hampshire; Mr. Carl S. Armato, President and CEO of Novant Health in North Carolina; Mr. John A. DiAngelo, former President and CEO of Inspira Health in New Jersey; and Gary S. Kaplan, MD, former Chairman and CEO of Virginia Mason in Seattle, Washington.

 

About Costs of Care

Costs of Care is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating change agents who will lead the creation of a more affordable and equitable health system. Since 2009, Costs of Care has collected personal accounts from physicians, nurses, and patients all over the United States that illustrate routine and high-yield opportunities to improve the value of care delivery. Costs of Care directs the STARS program for medical and interprofessional students, catalyzing grassroots, student-led initiatives to advance health care value in medical education.

Costs of Care has also created widely adopted and enduring resources to educate medical trainees and clinicians about how to address health care costs and provide high-value care, including the textbook Understanding Value-Based Healthcare, the “COST” framework for designing value improvement projects, multiple workshops, and free video modules.

In December 2019, Costs of Care launched the Affordability Moonshot – envisioning a world in which “no one has to choose between their life and their life-savings” – informed by an Affordability Framework for health systems and paired with an Affordability Accelerator in September 2021 with the subsequent publication “The Affordability Accelerator: A Road Map to Improve Patient Out-of-Pocket Costs and Trustworthiness in Health Care” in NEJM Catalyst.

Connect at http://costsofcare.org, be a part of the Moonshot at moonshot.costsofcare.org, and follow on Twitter/Instagram @CostsOfCare.

 

About The Leapfrog Group

Founded in 2000 by large employers and other purchasers, The Leapfrog Group is a national nonprofit organization driving a movement for giant leaps for patient safety. The flagship Leapfrog Hospital Survey and new Leapfrog Ambulatory Surgery Center (ASC) Survey collect and transparently report hospital and ASC performance, empowering purchasers to find the highest-value care and giving consumers the lifesaving information they need to make informed decisions. The Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade, Leapfrog’s other main initiative, assigns letter grades to hospitals based on their record of patient safety, helping consumers protect themselves and their families from errors, injuries, accidents, and infections. For more, follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for our newsletter

 

Information provided to TVL on behalf of Costs of Care and The Leapfrog Group by:
Sam Kennedy