Virtua CEO Reflects on Career in Healthcare

Steve Adubato heads to the Salvation Army Ray & Joan Kroc Corps Community Center to speak with the President and CEO of Virtua, Rich Miller, about the state of healthcare in New Jersey and his plans after he steps down as head of Virtua at the end of 2017.

4/15/17 #3007

Excerpt:

"Hi, this is Steve Adubato. We're coming to you from beautiful Camden, New Jersey. It is our pleasure to welcome our longtime friend Rich Miller, who is the President and Chief Executive Officer at Virtua. Good to see you Rich. Good to see you Steve. This is your neck of the woods? Yeah it is. You're here in South Jersey, it's great to have you down here. Now when I got word not too long ago that Rich Miller was, in fact, stepping down at the end of 2017? Correct. Yes. Wow. [laughter] You've had a impressive, important career here. Why is it time for you? Well, you know, actually this decision was made a couple of years ago, Steve. I mean my wife and I talked about it two years ago, and I signed a three year contract and told my board that would be the end for me. So this has been in the planning mode for a couple years, and frankly, I've been CEO for 21 years. Has it been? Yes. Yeah. I'll be 65 at the end of the year. So I said it's time to do other things. I want to do other things in life, and I've done enough, and done good stuff at Virtua, I'm really pleased with where it is. Time to do some other things. Let's talk about it a little bit. Big picture. Mm hmm. And we've known each other a long time, and Virtua has, in fact, been an underwriter of our programming... Mm hmm. ...in public broadcasting for, I don't know, about a decade or so. But what I'm curious about is this. If you were to say one or two of the biggest lessons that you have learned as CEO of Virtua, in this always evolving healthcare environment, biggest would be? The biggest lesson I learned, I think, as a CEO is people are your most important asset. And having great people make great organization. So... and I also will tell you that building culture takes a long time. And when I became a CEO at age 42, I thought I could build a culture in two weeks. [laughter] And I learned how stupid that was, and it takes a long time. But building great organizations revolve around great people. And as I look back, Steve, over 21 years, we're there. I mean, we've gotten there, and we've gotten there through hiring good senior leaders, and senior leaders beget great leaders throughout the organization. Let's talk about the incredible changes in healthcare. Mm hmm. So one of the things we've talked about over the years, Rich, is the delivery of healthcare..."