Chief Improvement Officer Skip Steward on Leading Change in Healthcare

From People Solve Problems by Jamie Flinchbaugh

March 18, 2026 · 26 min

About this episode

Skip Steward discusses leading change in healthcare and the importance of prioritization and strategic deployment processes.

Skip Steward , VP and Chief Improvement Officer at Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation, sat down with Jamie Flinchbaugh on the People Solve Problems podcast to share what thirty-four years of cross-industry experience looks like when it's put to work inside one of the most complex systems in existence, American healthcare. The conversation opened on the challenge of prioritization, a particular puzzle in healthcare where competing demands and shifting conditions are the norm. Skip traced his team's solution back to a strategic A3 deployment process he brought to Baptist Memorial nearly thirteen years ago, developed with the guidance of mentor and improvement expert Pascal Dennis, author of Getting the Right Things Done . At the highest level, this process organizes all work under four guiding themes: right care, right time, right place, and right cost. Skip noted that across Baptist's more than twenty-four thousand employees, almost anyone can finish that sentence from memory, a quiet but telling measure of how deeply the direction has taken root throughout the organization. But strategy at the enterprise level is only part of the story. Skip described how, at the ground…

People in this episode

Host: Jamie Flinchbaugh

Guest: Skip Steward

Topics covered

healthcare
leadership
change management
strategic planning
organizational culture

Keywords

healthcare
leadership
improvement
strategic A3
Baptist Memorial
change management
organizational strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Baptist Memorial Health Care Corporation

Books & works: Getting the Right Things Done