Triad Leadership Impact

As the pace of healthcare transformation accelerates, health systems must break down silos and strengthen leadership alignment across clinical, operational and administrative domains. The triad leadership model—uniting physician, nursing and administrative executives in a formal partnership—has emerged as a critical solution for navigating complexity, improving agility and achieving enterprise-wide performance goals.

This interactive panel features the executive triad from Penrose Hospital, a CommonSpirit Health facility, who will share how they operationalize triad leadership to drive trust, transparency and results. Under the facilitation of Melissa Fitzpatrick, the conversation will explore real-world strategies for building cohesive triads, resetting alignment after disruption and sustaining a shared vision for organizational improvement. Drawing from evidence in the Physician Leadership Journal and case studies like that of RWJBarnabas Health, the session will highlight how triads outperform siloed structures through aligned accountability and diverse expertise. Participants will learn how Penrose Hospital’s triad leadership has:

• Reduced left-without-being-seen rates in the ED from 4.5% to 0.5% through coordinated, cross-functional problem-solving


• Improved hospital-acquired infection metrics by unifying medical standards, nursing compliance and operational support


• Expanded clinical engagement and frontline innovation by modeling shared governance from the top

Beyond metrics, the Penrose team will share candid lessons on trust-building, conflict navigation and how to reset when triads falter—drawing parallels to the high-functioning team behaviors outlined in Patrick Lencioni’s model of organizational health. This session offers practical value for healthcare executives at any stage of triad implementation, including those looking to:

• Unify fragmented decision-making


• Empower distributed leadership


• Build leadership pipelines that reflect interprofessional collaboration


• Foster a psychologically safe environment for innovation and change