ImageWith the deepest of thanks to our own (and Cardinal Health employee) Amy Snow, we present to you George Barrett, CEO of Cardinal Health.  Mr. Barrett gave an overview of Cardinal’s operations, history in and connections to Dublin, an RX for healthcare in the U.S., and general advice for succeeding in business. Here are some highlights of his presentation:
  • We are a business that allows health care professionals—nurse practitioners, nurses, and physicians—to do their work providing care. We work behind the scenes so that they can succeed.
  • We rank 21st on the Fortune 500 list, with$106 billion in revenues annually and 32,000 employees worldwide, so we are a fair sized company. We deliver about 25% of all medications in the U.S. and approximately half of all surgeries in the U.S. use our services.
  • One of my major aims is to be the best place on Earth for people to grow a career. I don’t care what color they are, what their gender is, what sexual orientation they are, we want to attract the best and the brightest and be the place where they grow and thrive.  It is ultimately about talent!  I don’t care how large your organization is, you must surround yourself with good people. You should always make sure you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.
  • We are now primarily a services business. We’ve spun off most other lines to focus on our core.
  • We have a very strong presence in Central Ohio, with about 4,200 employees.  We have many reasons to give back to the community.  Most of our employees used to be scattered throughout the area but now they mostly in one facility.  There’s a synergy that happens when people are in one place.  Face to face interaction creates an environment to get people out of their offices and go down the hall to make action happen. This community has given a lot to us and so we try to give back.  But the selfish reason behind our commitment is that the better the region is, the better it is for us. Some of our most exciting talent comes from outside the area, and we want to attract the best and brightest not only from here but from all over the world.
  • If you look at medial tourism, people from all over the world still come to Central Ohio and to the U.S.  to get the very best medical care.
  • But we are still struggling in many ways as a healthcare system.  We’re inefficient, sometimes our outcomes are no better even though we spend more money, so what do we need to do improve healthcare?
  • We have been a cautious supporter of healthcare reform and we think it is right for the nation to ask how we can improve it for everyone. We do believe the healthcare system needs to be fixed. But the Affordable Health Care Act has introduced complexities that we think are inefficient.
  • We need to take complexity out of the system. We need to create a more coordinated and better organized system. We been organized around providers and not patients. We must make care about outcomes, and that’s a healthy patient, and not about just more procedures.  We can’t have a perverse incentive for more procedures.
  • Most IT systems are billing systems and don’t have the patient care information that they need to ensure healthy, evidence-based outcomes. ·         We are living longer but are less healthy.  We have chronic health issues, real epidemics, and we need to get healthier as a society.
  • We had a passive consumer—people can make better decisions about buying a car than getting healthcare—and we need to change to provide the tools to let people make better choices.
  • Pharmaceuticals will have to change to more targeted medicines, so that we identify genetic makers that allow drugs that work better for individuals and not work for some people in a large group.
  • Health care is going to change. We, and every business, need to compete to win every day. We can’t say, “It is going to change in the future, we don’t have to worry about the present.” Strategy is a constant process, not a meeting you have once a year.  We meet for strategy all the time.  You must always listen to your customers and convert insight into action. Talent is everything.  Agility and speed are important no matter how big you are. The bigger you get, the more hierarchical you get, and the more isolated the leader gets.  That won’t work. You need an organization that is so fast and so open that the leader is always in the know and you can always be nimble.  Threats will always come from unexpected directions.  The world is much bigger than you ever thought, so always be alert and ready for action.
If Rotary is in part a meeting of business with philanthropy, learning with working for a better region and world, then we at Dublin A.M. have just had a great example of what Rotary is. Dublin is fortunate to have Cardinal here, and we are fortunate to have had an inspirational message in the Cardinal Rules of business.