UI Health Care COO: Redesign Operations Before Economics Forces It

Academic health systems are facing pressure on multiple fronts at once, and the leaders who fare best will act before economics forces their hand. That is the message from Jody Reyes, COO of the clinical enterprise at University of Iowa Health Care in Iowa City, in an interview with Becker's Hospital Review.

The financial pillars that have long propped up academic medicine, including research funding, teaching missions, and clinical margins, are all under strain simultaneously. Reyes argues that waiting until a budget shortfall forces cuts leads to reactive, blunt decisions. Redesigning operations proactively lets systems rethink workflows, staffing, and care delivery on their own terms rather than under crisis conditions.

In practice, that means scrutinizing how work gets done before the money runs short, rather than slashing after the fact. For executives running teaching hospitals, the takeaway is timing: the organizations that restructure early preserve more control over their mission and their margins than those that scramble once the pressure peaks.