While Barry Ostrowsky is not a new face to Barnabas Health — he’s been with the organization for 20 years — the challenges he faces as CEO will be new.
“I had as a mentor and a predecessor someone who allowed me to inherit an incredibly strong system together with a very strong management team,” Ostrowsky said of Ronald J. Del Mauro, whom he succeeded Jan. 1. “What has changed more than who sits in the corner office is the environment of health care … what may have been topical or strategic a year ago, maybe even six months ago, is no longer at that level of priority because there are new priorities.”
Ostrowsky, who had been president and chief operating officer, set aside the month of January as a planning month for the Barnabas management team, to create the organization’s priorities, discuss resource allocation and deliberate on the company’s strategy for overseeing six hospitals and more than 4,600 physicians.
Ostrowsky said the overwhelming challenge he and other health care executives face is the “tension between access to excellent service and the resources available to support the delivery of those services.”
“The blurring of the line between the finance side and the delivery side is a stark reminder that there seems to be too few resources available to create and deliver the health care that all of us seem to want,” Ostrowsky said. “It becomes a political argument, it becomes a practical argument and it becomes an issue for business.”
Chief among the challenges he’ll face is the possible incorporation of University Hospital into the Barnabas system. Ostrowsky said the attempt to bring the hospital on board is “a top priority” and, if the commission reviewing the move — which is deciding the larger question of the fate of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey — gives a favorable opinion when it releases its recommendations later this month, the move should be completed by the end of the year.
“There’s never been a more exciting time,” Ostrowsky said of taking the helm. “If we’re going to make good on delivering the kind of health care that will make us all proud, it’s going to require that we overcome a lot of obstacles and challenges. But for excitement purposes, I would put this at the top of the list.”
