Health Care Hall of Fame - 2007
Gail L. Warden
Warden’s team-oriented leadership drove Ford’s growth over 15-year tenure
When Gail L. Warden became president and chief executive officer for Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System in 1988, he brought with him a range of experience that has contributed to the success of both Henry Ford and the health management profession as a whole.
Under Warden’s leadership, Henry Ford coalesced from a group of corporations into a single system, grew revenue from under $1 billion to $3.5 billion, saw staff increase from 8,000 to 18,000 and cultivated a system where outpatient visits doubled from about 1.5 million to
3 million per year, he says.
“Most people, if you ask, will say I was fairly visionary about what could happen—not only in healthcare but in the organizations I ran,” Warden says. “I was very much a participative kind of manager. I try to manage through a team, not just top down.” Warden retired from Henry Ford in 2003.
Warden has been recognized previously in Modern Healthcare as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare from 2002 to 2004 and one of the 25 most influential people over the previous 25 years in 2001. In 2000, the American Hospital Association bestowed its prestigious Distinguished Service Award on him, and in 1999, the American College of Healthcare Executives gave him its Gold Medal Award.
Nancy Schlichting, who served as chief operating officer during the last four years of Warden’s tenure and is now president and CEO of Henry Ford, described Warden as a “mentor, friend and colleague, I would never describe him as a boss. He’s a very soft-spoken man, very humble in many ways, and an individual who truly respects the people he works with, treats them really as part of his family.”
Warden, 68, brought experience gained in an academic setting at Chicago-based Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, now known as Rush University Medical Center; a group health system at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound in Seattle; and a policymaking environment at the American Hospital Association, where he served as executive vice president, Schlichting says.
“What Gail has meant to this organization is understanding all the components that make up Henry Ford Health System,” she says. “What he brought was a very unique blend of experience that worked very well at Henry Ford.”
As executive vice president and COO of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s from 1965 to 1976, Warden helped lead the reopening of Rush Medical College and the creation of both the Rush College of Nursing and the Rush University System of Health, a network of affiliated hospitals. “The important thing about my stint at Rush was, I got very well-grounded in academic medicine,” he says.
At the AHA, where he worked from 1977 to 1981, Warden created constituency centers for groups such as multihospital systems, rural hospitals, rehabilitation centers and behavioral health specialists that exist to this day. He led a voluntary effort to reduce costs to avoid caps that the Carter administration wanted to impose, he beefed up the association’s hospital research and education trust, and he developed a “policy shop,” Warden says.
Warden turned around a money-losing organization during his eight years at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, where he expanded the organization statewide; created a foundation as well as a center for health services research, “which is still one of the best in the country”; and founded a center for health promotion and disease prevention, “one of the first in the country,” Warden says. “They were looking for someone who had run a health system but also had an understanding of health plans.”
During his 15 years at the helm of Henry Ford, Warden led the system in efforts to better integrate its hospitals, medical group and health plans; raised funds to secure 45 endowed chairs; lobbied the state of Michigan to address the uninsured; established school-based health centers in the city of Detroit; and created its own centers for health services research, clinical effectiveness, health promotion and disease prevention.
“One of the most important things I did was to develop a strategic approach that brought everything together,” Warden says. “We got the system developed in such a way that everybody was pulling together and on the same page.” He adds that he also initiated a “major fundraising effort” that led to the endowed chairs.
Warden, 68, brought experience gained in an academic setting at Chicago-based Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, now known as Rush University Medical Center; a group health system at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound in Seattle; and a policymaking environment at the American Hospital Association, where he served as executive vice president, Schlichting says.
“What Gail has meant to this organization is understanding all the components that make up Henry Ford Health System,” she says. “What he brought was a very unique blend of experience that worked very well at Henry Ford.”
As executive vice president and COO of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s from 1965 to 1976, Warden helped lead the reopening of Rush Medical College and the creation of both the Rush College of Nursing and the Rush University System of Health, a network of affiliated hospitals. “The important thing about my stint at Rush was, I got very well-grounded in academic medicine,” he says.
At the AHA, where he worked from 1977 to 1981, Warden created constituency centers for groups such as multihospital systems, rural hospitals, rehabilitation centers and behavioral health specialists that exist to this day. He led a voluntary effort to reduce costs to avoid caps that the Carter administration wanted to impose, he beefed up the association’s hospital research and education trust, and he developed a “policy shop,” Warden says.
Warden turned around a money-losing organization during his eight years at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, where he expanded the organization statewide; created a foundation as well as a center for health services research, “which is still one of the best in the country”; and founded a center for health promotion and disease prevention, “one of the first in the country,” Warden says. “They were looking for someone who had run a health system but also had an understanding of health plans.”
During his 15 years at the helm of Henry Ford, Warden led the system in efforts to better integrate its hospitals, medical group and health plans; raised funds to secure 45 endowed chairs; lobbied the state of Michigan to address the uninsured; established school-based health centers in the city of Detroit; and created its own centers for health services research, clinical effectiveness, health promotion and disease prevention.
“One of the most important things I did was to develop a strategic approach that brought everything together,” Warden says. “We got the system developed in such a way that everybody was pulling together and on the same page.” He adds that he also initiated a “major fundraising effort” that led to the endowed chairs.
Continuity of leadership
But Warden says he takes the greatest pride in the continuity he left in his wake, with Schlichting and other top officers still running the organization now that he has transitioned to president emeritus. “The thing I’m proudest of with Henry Ford is that the team I left in place is still there,” Warden says. “I was very committed to diversity. I was very committed to recognizing the contributions everybody makes. I was a great believer in strong relationships with the physicians, as they can make or break the organization.”
Schlichting says Warden took Henry Ford in a number of profitable directions. “He helped bring the health plan into the fold in a much more significant way. It really became part of the system under Gail’s leadership,” she says. “He worked to bring community hospitals into the system as well. … And he created two joint venture relationships as well, with hospitals in markets that we needed to be present in—in Macomb County and Grosse Pointe,” Mich.
The health system also expanded its outreach into Detroit and other communities during Warden’s tenure, Schlichting says. “He took great interest,” she says. “Henry Ford has always played a meaningful role in the community, not just from a healthcare perspective, but in terms of improving the overall community as a corporate citizen.”
“I was very involved in the state of Michigan in addressing the issues of the uninsured. Henry Ford was one of the institutions affected by that, with $125 million a year in uncompensated care,” Warden says. “I actively led and am still involved with an effort to establish school-based health centers in the city of Detroit, and that has become a national issue.” Warden is currently lobbying the U.S. Senate and House to increase funding for the centers.
Public service is nothing new for Warden. During his tenure at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, he became and remains active in the former Group Health Association of America, now known as America’s Health Insurance Plans, which counts HMOs, PPOs and other health plans as members. He chaired the association’s quality committee, which led to him co-founding the National Committee for Quality Assurance and becoming founding chairman of the National Quality Forum, where he served for seven years before stepping down in 2006.
Schlichting says Warden took Henry Ford in a number of profitable directions. “He helped bring the health plan into the fold in a much more significant way. It really became part of the system under Gail’s leadership,” she says. “He worked to bring community hospitals into the system as well. … And he created two joint venture relationships as well, with hospitals in markets that we needed to be present in—in Macomb County and Grosse Pointe,” Mich.
The health system also expanded its outreach into Detroit and other communities during Warden’s tenure, Schlichting says. “He took great interest,” she says. “Henry Ford has always played a meaningful role in the community, not just from a healthcare perspective, but in terms of improving the overall community as a corporate citizen.”
“I was very involved in the state of Michigan in addressing the issues of the uninsured. Henry Ford was one of the institutions affected by that, with $125 million a year in uncompensated care,” Warden says. “I actively led and am still involved with an effort to establish school-based health centers in the city of Detroit, and that has become a national issue.” Warden is currently lobbying the U.S. Senate and House to increase funding for the centers.
Public service is nothing new for Warden. During his tenure at the Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, he became and remains active in the former Group Health Association of America, now known as America’s Health Insurance Plans, which counts HMOs, PPOs and other health plans as members. He chaired the association’s quality committee, which led to him co-founding the National Committee for Quality Assurance and becoming founding chairman of the National Quality Forum, where he served for seven years before stepping down in 2006.
Warden participated in the President’s Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry, and he served on the Institute of Medicine committee that wrote the groundbreaking 1999 report, To Err Is Human, which focused intense scrutiny on reducing errors in the healthcare environment, as well as the follow-up, Crossing the Quality Chasm, which came out in 2001.
That committee has just completed a report on the emergency medical system in the U.S. that will be released in May, and which Warden predicted will be a “landmark report—will have significant impact. It calls for the government to get much more involved in the funding of emergency care.”
Janet Corrigan, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, says Warden has made numerous contributions to the quality movement. “Gail has really provided a constant focus and drumbeat,” she says. “He’s one of the early pioneers who identified the critical need to address gaps in quality, and he has worked tirelessly over the last decades or more to raise awareness of safety and quality concerns, and to identify the best ways to address those concerns.” She adds that the “NQF would not be where it is without Gail’s leadership and commitment. … He is a very reasoned person who exercises good judgment but is capable of making tough decisions. He is a man of few words oftentimes. He is somewhat understated. When he speaks, it’s something you really want to listen to.”
Warden also served as the founding chairman of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, which echoes his own background in bringing together people from the academic and practitioner sides of healthcare. “We have had a substantial impact on the curriculum of programs in healthcare management, and an impact on the accreditation process for healthcare management programs.”
In 1995, Warden finally came full circle to chair the AHA’s board of trustees as the first former staff person to do so.
Janet Corrigan, president and CEO of the National Quality Forum, says Warden has made numerous contributions to the quality movement. “Gail has really provided a constant focus and drumbeat,” she says. “He’s one of the early pioneers who identified the critical need to address gaps in quality, and he has worked tirelessly over the last decades or more to raise awareness of safety and quality concerns, and to identify the best ways to address those concerns.” She adds that the “NQF would not be where it is without Gail’s leadership and commitment. … He is a very reasoned person who exercises good judgment but is capable of making tough decisions. He is a man of few words oftentimes. He is somewhat understated. When he speaks, it’s something you really want to listen to.”
Warden also served as the founding chairman of the National Center for Healthcare Leadership, which echoes his own background in bringing together people from the academic and practitioner sides of healthcare. “We have had a substantial impact on the curriculum of programs in healthcare management, and an impact on the accreditation process for healthcare management programs.”
In 1995, Warden finally came full circle to chair the AHA’s board of trustees as the first former staff person to do so.