Jefferson Health CEO reflects on the system’s rapid growth as it celebrates a bicentennial

Jefferson Medical College opened in 1824 as one of the first medical schools in the U.S. Two hundred years later, Jefferson has grown into a sprawling enterprise that includes a university, a health insurance business, and more hospitals than any other health system in the Philadelphia region.

Jefferson Health is poised to keep growing as it now launches bicentennial year celebrations. Jefferson’s recently announced preliminary agreement to acquire Lehigh Valley Health Network expands its reach from 17 to 30 hospitals, stretching from South Jersey to Scranton. By number of hospitals, Jefferson will rank among the nation’s 20 largest nonprofit health systems.

» READ MORE: A timeline of Jefferson’s acquisitions since 2015

Jefferson is also opening a new Center City medical tower, planning bicentennial galas, and has pledged to provide 200,000 hours of volunteer work in the region.

The Inquirer spoke to CEO Joseph Cacchione about the future of the institution and the challenges that come with growth, and how his vision for connecting health-care services to the university extends to fashion design. Responses were edited for clarity and length.

The fact that we are 200 years old means that we’ve been here and we are going to stay here. We’re committed to this community.

It’s a three-legged stool. It’s the health plans. It’s the university. It’s the health system. And all three of those, we have to make sure they’re working in top order. But where we think there’s a real difference, and where we can really be differentiated, is where the three work together and how they work together.

Jefferson grew so quickly. I think that, really, the problems that come with such rapid growth are cultural. Do you have an aligned culture? So we’re doing a lot of work today on aligning the culture around the mission, vision, and values of the organization.

That’s probably the most important thing. And then really making sure that the organization doesn’t compete with itself.

» READ MORE: Jefferson Health lost $48.7 million in first half of fiscal 2024. That’s a big improvement from last year.

And we’re trying to be as efficient as possible to deliver the highest quality of care. I think it’s a responsibility today to be stewards of our health care resources and our health care dollars. It’s not just “more, more, more.” More is not always better.

It starts with the [volunteer] stuff we are doing today. This commitment that we’re here to improve lives and it’s not just about profitability.

The culture that we want is people [working at Jefferson] are empowered to solve problems. When they see a problem that doesn’t look right, or they see a problem confronting a patient, they can solve that problem.

We want make them feel that they can make the difference. Don’t need to run it up the flagpole and ask Joe Cacchione if we can go out and do the right thing.

» READ MORE: Chair of heart surgery leaving Jefferson for Tower, trading prestige for the ability to have an impact

I’m not going to comment.

But I will tell you, our chairs, by and large, are in a really good place right now and they feel more empowered now than they felt in a long time.

Whenever someone leaves an organization, I don’t try to get inside their head.

The medical school is very important to our academic mission, as an academic health system.

In addition, we are committed to the entire university. We have pipeline programs, not only in medicine. In nursing, for example, in the last two years, we graduated almost 1,000 nursing students, and we hired almost 600 of them into our facilities. So our nursing shortage is much less, and we have only a small number of contract nurses.

» READ MORE: Meet Said Ibrahim, the new dean of Jefferson’s medical school

Even some of our majors that are not traditional health care majors, they do have a relationship with our health-care innovations. Our fashion design school is designing clothing for the chronically ill. Those are the kind of things that the undergraduate university brings to the table.

My wife gets a good chuckle out of that.