In healthcare and higher education, WittKieffer helps clients realize strategic opportunities by leveraging interim executives. We provide interim leaders who bring direct, relevant experience to your organization, especially in times of change or challenge.
A Leadership Void? A Crisis? A Critical Project? Count on an Interim Leader
Our interim executive candidates are pre-screened and highly vetted, each with extensive senior-level experience with respected healthcare delivery systems, hospitals, academic medical centers, colleges and universities. With interim leadership in healthcare or higher education, maintain strong leadership today and lay a foundation for future success.
Interim Leaders Tackle Key Leadership Challenges
Move Ahead with Strategic and Operational Imperatives
Some things are too important to let wait during a leadership vacancy or critical project. An experienced interim leader keeps strategic initiatives moving ahead, setting the table for permanent members of the leadership team.
Keep Executive Burnout at Bay
Fatigue and burnout take their toll on executives. An interim leader augments the capacity of an existing team, distributing workload and responsibility.
Access Specific Expertise
Organizations face extraordinary challenges or opportunities outside the steady state skills of an existing team. An interim leader can add highly specific experience directly aligned to tackling those challenges – or taking full advantage of those opportunities.
Thrive in a Crisis
Crises are best met with the aid of those who have faced them before. Interim leaders often relish the opportunity to lend experienced hands to safely navigate an organization through a crisis by contributing proven strategies, tactics and communications.
Deploy a Change Agent
Interim leaders can be agents of change in any organization. They provide a seasoned voice of reason, skill and experience to projects that necessarily may challenge the status quo.
Integrate Following an Acquisition
Following an acquisition or consolidation, most organizations lack the experience to integrate people, operations and systems. Interim leaders can provide proven expertise in acquisition or merger integration, while helping an organization to develop its own integration capabilities for the future.
We Are Experts in Interim
We meet the same standards of service, attentiveness and excellence that have defined WittKieffer for more than 50 years. Our team understands best practices for interim executive placement, how to optimize the process and the distinct skills that make an executive successful in an interim role.
Find the Perfect Fit
We provide interim leadership for CEO and president roles, C-suite and other senior leadership positions in critical areas including strategy and operations, finance, human resources, academic administration, nursing, enrollment and many others. Our interim executive candidates are pre-screened and vetted, with extensive senior-level experience within respected healthcare delivery systems, hospitals, academic medical centers, colleges and universities.
Success Stories
Sterling McHorney - Interim Executive Director of Ambulatory Services, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
Interim Leadership Ensures Uninterrupted Service, Quality
Finding itself in need of leadership for Ambulatory Services, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (Buffalo, NY), turned to Sterling McHorney as Interim Executive Director in December of 2019. With an expertise and focus in clinical transformation and redesign, McHorney deftly pivoted to lead creation and implementation of a drive-up testing model, plans to ramp down volume and creating a clinic consolidation plan to allow for more bed capacity in the event of a surge, a revamp of the budget to reflect the facility’s COVID-19 response, social distancing and virtual visit protocols. She proved to be a skilled collaborator and consensus builder, providing an outside perspective and inspiring change to previously rigid practices. As conditions eased, Sterling led a clinical transformation project for chemotherapy redesign to include creation of an independent business unit that would serve as a model for the entire organization.
Jeff Egbert - CEO, Susan B. Allen Memorial Hospital
Interim CEO Provides Steady Hand, Led COVID Response at Susan B. Allen
In October 2019, Susan B Allen Memorial Hospital in El Dorado, KS, sought the help of WittKieffer’s Interim Leadership Practice to identify an interim CEO to oversee operations as the board sought a permanent leader. When Jeff Egbert, a healthcare consultant with nearly 20 years of CEO experience, accepted this assignment he surely was unaware of the immense pressure hospitals and healthcare providers would soon face from a global health crisis. In addition to turning around hospital operations and preparing the organization for its future, Egbert is credited with demonstrating strong leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as the staff and board worked to deliver the highest levels of care.
Matthew D. Bailey - CEO, Floyd Memorial Hospital
Floyd Memorial Relied On Experienced CEO to Bridge Leadership Gap
Not wanting to be without leadership as it searched for its next CEO in 2019, Floyd Memorial Hospital in New Albany, IN, partnered with the WittKieffer Interim Leadership Practice to identify an experienced executive to guide operations for the short-term. With 20 years of CEO experience and a deep understanding of the healthcare landscape across the state of Indiana, Matthew D. Bailey, was the ideal selection. Bailey guided hospital leadership and staff as it stepped up services to meet unprecedented demand for care as the country dealt with a global health crisis. When a permanent CEO was named in September of 2020, Floyd Memorial Hospital was continuing to provide the community with superior care and service.
Connect with a Practice Leader
Ready to find leadership that can meet your immediate needs? We’ll help you identify the ideal candidates for your organization. Practice Leader Brian Krehbiel can answer your questions or tell you more.
Interim Leadership Resources
Is There a Remedy for Executive Retirements?
Interim Executives: Providing Stability in Times of Uncertainty
Interim Leadership: The Critical First Stage of a Successful Executive Hire
Interim Executives Provide a Remedy for Upheaval in Healthcare
Executive Recruiting: The Mergers & Acquisitions Catch-22 and How Interim Leaders Can Help