Access the full conversation with Dr. Christine K. Cassel below.
Dr. Christine K. Cassel, former Planning Dean of what is now the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, has spent decades shaping how medicine cares for older adults and patients at the end of life.
Christine spoke with Bob Clarke, Chairman of Furst Group and NuBrick Partners, for a special edition of Conversations in Leadership featuring past recipients of the Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award. She reflected on the issues she is most proud of helping bring forward, the question she believes leaders should ask before making a decision, her hope for artificial intelligence, and the mentorship that still inspires her.
Her reflections offer a look back at a distinguished career and a practical framework for leaders working through the complexity of modern healthcare, one built on curiosity, courage, and compassion, and on never losing sight of the people affected by every decision.
In 2016, Christine received the Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award from the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL).
How Christine Cassel Helped Bring Geriatric Medicine and Palliative Care to the Fore
Asked what stands out as her most significant leadership accomplishment, Christine began with the organizations she led. “I hope that as a leader, I helped to strengthen the various organizations that I led over my career,” she said. “But what I’m really most proud of are the issues that I helped to really bring to the fore and make real.”
The first was geriatric medicine. “When I started geriatric medicine, it didn’t exist in the United States,” she said. “And there was a big stigma about old people in medicine.” She recalled how her attendings, when she was a resident, would say on rounds, “Find us a young person with a rare disease so we can talk about that.” The rest of the time, she and her fellow residents were caring for older people with common diseases. “Nobody ever wanted to talk about that,” she said.
Hear Dr. Christine K. Cassel recall the stigma about older people in medicine
when geriatric medicine did not yet exist in the United States.
Christine is quick to share the credit. The discipline of geriatric medicine, she said, “sort of evolved in the United States along with me and my career, and I wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of people.” She takes pride in how it has “become an accepted specialty” that has “affected how we care for older people in healthcare.”
She pursued a similar mission around end-of-life care. In the 1980s and 1990s, she noted, it was “considered a failure of medicine when somebody died.” As she put it, “Nobody paid attention to people dying in the hospital.” There was very little discussion with patients about their preferences for end-of-life care, and the term “death with dignity” wasn’t even used.
Through scholarship, publications, and advocacy, along with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others, Christine helped what is now known as palliative medicine and hospice care become a reality available to patients. She also emphasized the major role of the medical profession in that care, which “not only provides comfort and relief of suffering for the patients, but is deeply meaningful for the profession as well.”
Hear Dr. Christine K. Cassel describe how palliative medicine and hospice care became a reality for patients.
Both of Christine’s signature accomplishments share a common thread. She saw needs that medicine had overlooked, then did the work to make them real.
Why Curiosity, Courage, and Compassion Make a Good Leader
Asked what trait she most hopes to see in emerging leaders, Christine did not point to a single quality. “I think there’s not one trait,” she said. “I think that one of the traits of a leader is that you have to be comfortable in complexity.”
Beyond that, she named three qualities she considers critical. “Curiosity, courage, and compassion,” she said. “Those three Cs are what I think makes a good leader.”
She spoke most about the first of the three. “You have to not assume that you know what’s right or that what is the path that others have taken is right,” she said. “But to be curious about something you don’t know, to bring in information that might be surprising or challenging.”
Hear Dr. Christine K. Cassel name the three traits she believes make a good leader.
That kind of curiosity takes deliberate effort as a leader’s responsibilities grow. “As people become leaders, they sometimes are so busy and often don’t get people coming to them with challenging ideas that challenge your own thinking,” she explained. “And so you have to actually go seeking that.”
Bob called the three Cs “fantastic guideposts” and said he would remember them.
Why Leaders Should Ask Who Their Decisions Affect
When Bob asked for one piece of advice for the next generation of leaders, Christine began with the pressures they face. “Today’s healthcare system is ever more complex,” she said, describing “even more extreme challenges” of cost and complexity, difficulty with patients’ access, and concerns about quality and accountability.
In that environment, she believes one question matters most. “What a leader has to ask in this environment is when you’re making decisions, to be very conscious of who are you making those decisions for, who will it affect,” she said.
She drew a distinction between the people a leader answers to and the people a decision touches. “Not just kind of who are you working for, like the board… All that’s important,” she said. “But really think about who’s affected by whatever decisions that you make, and sometimes that ends up being a surprising answer.”
That question does not simplify the challenge, but it does provide a consistent point of reference amid competing priorities.
Bob connected the answer to Furst Group’s own work. “In our executive search work and our leadership development work, we see this constantly,” he said. “When we recruit and place a chief medical officer, a clinical chair, for example, the downstream impact touches the entire community and the patients being served.”
Capturing Artificial Intelligence for the Good in Healthcare
Asked about her greatest hope for the future of healthcare, Christine pointed to artificial intelligence. “My one hope for the future is that we can capture artificial intelligence for the good,” she said. “I think it’s huge, and I think leadership is going to be a big part of whether it ends up being good or not.”
She was careful not to frame AI in simple terms. “Obviously it won’t be simply good or not,” she said. “There already are many things that are wonderful about it.” The technology, she added, brings her back to her earlier point about “thinking about who’s affected and how they’re affected by these, in some cases, wonderful but kind of scary new inventions that are right at our fingertips.”
Hear Dr. Christine K. Cassel explain why leadership will shape whether artificial intelligence ends up being good.
She also tied the technology back to the first of her three Cs. “It is unknown, speaking of curiosity, it is unknown where all this is headed,” she said. “And so I think that’s something that today’s leaders must be extremely aware of. And charting a strategic path in that kind of unknown, and so many other unknowns as well, is really challenging.”
How Mentorship Extends a Leader’s Impact
For all her contributions to geriatric medicine and palliative care, Christine closed the conversation by pointing to something else she values deeply, mentorship. “When I think about what I’m most proud of and is meaningful, the other thing I think of is all of the wonderful people who I now see out in the healthcare environment who I had a little bit of part in helping them along their way,” she said.
“I still get enormous pleasure out of mentoring young people and helping, offering advice, working on manuscripts, various things,” she added. “…It’s truly inspiring, the people who keep coming through this profession of ours.”
That investment in others carries forward well past any single leader’s tenure, a reminder that a leader’s influence often extends furthest through the people they help develop.
Her optimism about those who follow is clear. “As daunting as it is… there are wonderful people that are coming into this world and are going to make it better,” she said.
What Healthcare Leaders Can Take From Christine’s Approach
Christine’s reflections offer a few clear takeaways for healthcare leaders at every stage. Be willing to raise the issues that others have grown accustomed to ignoring, as she did with geriatric medicine and care of the dying. Seek out the challenging ideas that rarely reach a busy leader on their own. Before making a decision, look past the board and the organization’s vision to ask who the decision will affect.
Her emphasis on mentorship adds another layer to that lesson. The people she has helped along their way continue to carry that work forward, extending her influence well beyond any single accomplishment.
For healthcare leaders facing their own version of complexity, her framework of curiosity, courage, and compassion offers a practical starting point.
Access the Full Conversation
Bob Clarke, Chairman of Furst Group and NuBrick Partners, in conversation with Dr. Christine K. Cassel, former Planning Dean of what is now the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.
About
Dr. Christine K. Cassel:
Christine K. Cassel, MD, served as Planning Dean of the Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, now the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, from 2016 to 2018 and received the Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award in 2016. She is Senior Advisor for Strategy and Policy in the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
The Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award:
Presented by the National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL), the award honors Gail L. Warden, NCHL’s founding chair and President Emeritus of Henry Ford Health. It celebrates individuals who have driven meaningful, enduring improvements in health and healthcare through visionary leadership and a strong commitment to the wellbeing of their communities.
Conversations in Leadership:
Conversations in Leadership is our series featuring candid perspectives from healthcare leaders, hosted by Bob Clarke, Chairman of Furst Group and NuBrick Partners. In a special edition of the series, Bob, who serves on the NCHL Board of Directors, connects with past recipients of the Gail L. Warden Leadership Excellence Award to reflect on the decisions, challenges, and lessons that define great leadership.
