New CEO says Valleywise Health must meet a growing need for public safety net healthcare

Valleywise Health is getting a new leader. Dr. Michael White has been the county’s public hospital system’s chief clinical officer since 2019, but he’ll assume the roles of president and CEO on Aug. 1.

The Show spoke with White earlier and asked what he thinks will be the biggest challenges or things he’ll have to get used to in moving from his current role and being a practicing physician into the new job?

Full conversation

MICHAEL WHITE: Certainly it’ll be — as we continue our relationships and really building those relationships with the community, you know, being embedding those conversations with our community leaders and our community stakeholders on a strategic level, looking at the challenges that we serve and have as a county, as a community, to make sure that we’re listening.

We’re able to then craft the services that we provide in Valleywise Health in ways that we are going to best be able to meet those needs and make sure that we’re growing in the ways that are going to serve the citizens of Maricopa County and the state of Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: How do you try to balance the growth with continuing to be sort of what your mission says that you are?

MICHAEL WHITE: We want to make sure that we are there to provide that access to care. And we know as people’s circumstances change, that we may see increased numbers of patients that may not be able to access other healthcare systems across Maricopa County.

As we’ve seen the changes in Medicare and Medicaid that are on the horizon, there will likely be an influx of patients that may be needing to seek services in a public safety net healthcare system. We need to make sure that we’re able to grow to meet that need.

MARK BRODIE: Yeah, how do you try to plan for that? I mean, we’ve seen already the number of Arizonans who have dropped their Affordable Care Act policies because of the increase in cost, and we know that a lot of Arizonans who are currently on Medicaid will not be on Medicaid in the coming months. So how do you try to plan to treat those patients that might come to you in those circumstances?

MICHAEL WHITE: We need to look at our capacity. We need to look at our capacity in our Federally Qualified Health Centers, how do we have access to primary care, to begin to focus on prevention within the community so we have those resources available. We need to provide that education and help folks create those relationships, so they don’t end up having to only have care in our emergency department facilities. That’s where we’re likely going to see an overload or a bolus of patients that come in.

So how do we get patients to understand their symptoms, establish those relationships and have the availability and the access from there? As you note, we are going to see a number of our fellow Arizonans that are not going to have the same access to health insurance, whether it be Medicaid, whether it be through the ACA plans as they have had in the future.

Time will tell as we see some of these items get implemented, but we’re already looking at ways that we can be more efficient, ways that people can access us differently through virtual means, through telehealth and those ways to expand that capacity to be able to best meet the needs of our community.

MARK BRODIE: Does that involve, for example, like Valleywise expanding its services? Is that more of Valleywise partnering with other organizations to talk to their patients and maybe expand their services? What might that look like?

MICHAEL WHITE: It’s going to be a combination of both. We certainly know with the passage of Prop. 409, the citizens of Maricopa County have entrusted us with additional bond dollars to expand our facilities and expand our footprint across Maricopa County with additional behavioral health beds, with additional ambulatory clinic locations.

So there will be some natural growth that occurs as we move forward with those projects over the next three to five to eight years with these bond dollars that we’ve been entrusted.

In the short term, it’s going to be how are we efficiently, you know, getting patients in, partnering with those community organizations, providing those ability to have that education and complement services to make sure we’re best meeting the needs of our individual patients.

MARK BRODIE: Is it your expectation that for Arizonans who at some point down the road or maybe already have lost their health insurance, that more of them will be coming to Valleywise Health than perhaps other healthcare systems in the state for care?

MICHAEL WHITE: My answer there is going to be time will tell as this occurs. Do I think that people are going to need to seek healthcare in alternative means if they do not have coverage? The answer is yes.

How patients choose to do that, they may engage their already relationships with their healthcare providers, and those providers may be able to continue to provide those services in different ways. They may look to other services that have a different cost structure, or may have to seek care in those emergency department settings. So we are sort of looking at different ways that people may end up accessing, healthcare and healthcare delivery as we’re going forward.

MARK BRODIE: So, obviously Arizona has been in a provider shortage for quite a while now in terms of physicians and nurses and nurse practitioners and all sorts of other healthcare providers. How is Valleywise Health doing in that regard, especially as you’re talking about expanding the services that you’re offering in the locations you’re offering it?

MICHAEL WHITE: Valleywise Health, it has been a pillar of education and health professions education in our community since its inception. We had the first graduate medical education program for physicians in the state of Arizona back in the 1950s. We’re deeply committed to this academic mission and expanding the areas where we can educate healthcare professionals as we need to grow those.

We’ve seen expansion in our family medicine residency program, we’ve seen expansion with creation of subspecialty fellowship programs in cardiovascular disease, with newly around anesthesiology and in orthopedics. We continue to see areas where we need to grow clinicians to join the workforce practice here in Arizona, to continue to meet the healthcare needs of our community.

MARK BRODIE: So as you are getting set to take over as president and CEO of Valleywise, I’m curious what you think are the biggest opportunities, healthcare and health-related, that you’ll be facing as leader of this organization, and what you think will be the biggest health or healthcare-related challenge as leader of this group?

MICHAEL WHITE: I think with the changes that we’re going to see with Medicare and Medicaid that are on the horizon, I know that that is going to be a challenge for Valleywise Health and with healthcare delivery across the state of Arizona. I think the strong leadership and the foundation that we’ve built here within the organization over the last decade is going to allow us to navigate this and be able to make sure that we can continue to provide access to care and continue to provide these, you know, healthcare services to all of those that need it across the county.

As we look forward, we need to continue to expand areas in specialty care, especially in our behavioral health population. We’re looking, you know, again through the dollars we have with Prop 409 to expand our behavioral health capacity even further to meet that need of that vulnerable patient population that’s dealing with severe and serious mental illness and how we’re able to make sure that we have all the resources that are needed for that patient population to access care.

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Dr. Michael White. He will become the president and CEO of Valleywise Health on Aug. 1. Dr. White, thanks so much for your time, I really appreciate it.

MICHAEL WHITE: Thank you, Mark. I appreciate the time as well.

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