← Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
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- [00:02]
A
This is where healthcare leadership comes together. Becker's 16th annual meeting brings more than 3,500 hospital and health system executives and nearly 800 speakers to Chicago, April 13th through the 16th. This year's event includes keynote conversations with Dallas Cowboys legend Troy Aikman and former President George W. Bush. For the agenda and event details, visit Beckershospitalreview.com and click on the Events tab in the upper right. Looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.
- [00:33]
B
Welcome to the Beckers Healthcare Podcast. I'm Kelly Gooch, senior editor and enterprise lead at Beckers, and I'm pleased to welcome Holly McCormick, President and CEO of Cottage Hospital in New Hampshire, to the podcast today. Holly, thank you so much for joining us. Really looking forward to this conversation because your leadership sits at the intersection of rural healthcare, workforce strategy and financial stewardship, all areas that are especially critical right now as hospitals navigate mounting pressures and evolving patient needs. Before we dive in, I'd love to start by having you introduce yourself, share a little bit about your background, your path in healthcare leadership, and what brought you to Cottage Hospital.
- [01:08]
C
Sure. So, hi, thanks for having me. First of all, Kelly, like you said, I'm Holly McCormick. I am a registered nurse and the president and CEO here at Cottage Hospital, and I've been with Cottage Hospital for next month. It'll be 16 years, so quite a bit of time. My leadership journey started pretty early on in my career. I mean, I've held pretty much every position in the nursing ladder. I started off as a candy striper, became a nursing assistant when I was in college. I was what we call the nursing student associate, and then when I became a registered nurse, I worked at the bedside and pediatrics for the first part of my career, where I became a preceptor and a charge nurse and then decided I really wanted to be in a higher level of leadership. So I left my job at the bedside to take a supervisory position at a blood center of all places, which was so different from the usual nursing I was doing. Really decided I liked the leadership part of that job, but missed being in an acute care atmosphere and so jumped back into a hospital in a large system that did. It was a women infants hospital, and so I took a position there in management. That led me to a life change with my family moving to a rural area and taking a directorship here at Cottage Hospital, at which point I had completed my master's degree and was in a succession plan for the chief nurse position. So I was a chief nurse for about six years when the CEO position opened and I really was excited about the opportunity to take the nursing lens, to use that to lead this organization. And so in 2021, I applied for the position and I was selected. So I have been the CEO here at Cottage four and a half years now.
- [02:59]
B
That's such an amazing journey. And like you said, just being able to really look at the position through that nursing lens as well. And so, Holly, this is a question wanted to get to. There's so much that can be mentioned here, but wondering what the most important initiative you've led in the last year is, and what did you do and what were really the results there?
- [03:19]
C
Hands down, the absolute most important thing that I think we have accomplished here at cottage hospital in 2025 was our investment in our workforce. Since the pandemic, we had been struggling with increasing labor cost around contract labor, and we had tried, you know, several different things, trying to figure out how to turn that around, and we were just unsuccessful at it. And we were at the point last year in April, where we had the highest number of travelers in this organization, historically, ever, even during the actual pandemic. And so we knew we had to really do something. And so the decision that I made was to invest in our workforce. And so we said we have to put money into people and not into things for this organization. Right now, we have everything we need to safely take care of our patients, but we really need consistency. We need a predictable workforce. And so that's what we did. And between May 28, where we actually enacted the change, to present, right now, today, we have decreased the amount of travelers in our organization by 70%. And so that was an investment that we made that has paid off exponentially and has allowed us to be able to now be forward thinking about where Cottage can continue to go and grow now that we have started to secure the workforce. And don't get me wrong, there's still work that has to be done there, but it is just amazing to see. And that investment was dollars into people, into salaries, but it was also reviewing our benefits, making a conscientious eff. Not increase our health insurance costs to our employees. This year. It was looking at the. With the chief nurse, at the leadership structure within our nursing departments. It was adding an educator back to our staff. We hadn't had an educator in years, and we know that that's very important for the nurses that were hiring and were orienting to feel supported through the process. So it was a big investment, but it was absolutely the best thing that we did in the year 2025.
- [05:24]
B
That's amazing. And yeah, sounds like a definitely a worthwhile investment there. And like you said, I know work is never done and there are always challenges with the same workforce. But that's amazing to hear. And so like to love to point out that for 2025. So looking forward to 2026. Wanted to ask you what are the big priorities and headwinds you're focused on for for next year?
- [05:49]
C
I think every CEO you ask is going to give you the same answer that it's the financial challenges of and being an independent rural critical access hospital that's pretty much top of mind for us every year. I think if you ask me this time next year, I would be saying the same thing. That's the financial challenges. We know that there are a lot of changes coming for us and we don't know exactly what that's going to look like. But we also know that we have rural health transformation coming our way and so we don't know what that's going to look like for us either. We're hoping that that's going to be some positive to counteract some of the takeaways we've had. But we're really prioritize here at Cottage, focusing on what we do and making sure first that we're doing it really, really well, being laser focused on our service lines and evaluating them and making sure we're eliminating any waste. We're going to look at partnerships and using those partnerships to improve what we can improve access to care. We know that we need to grow our services in specialty, in the specialty areas, in the outpatient arena. And so that's something we're going to focus on and I think also using technology to help us accom those goals. So the partnerships along with technology can mean increasing access via telehealth, for example. And so it's really important that those rural health extenders around the telehealth stay in place for us because I think that gives a great opportunity for the people in our community to access the care that they need without having to travel a long distance.
- [07:21]
B
Thank you for sharing that as well. So, of course, financial challenges, like you said, on everyone's mind and still providing telehealth everything else you already mentioned. But so what would you say is maybe the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year?
- [07:37]
C
I think the hardest thing we'll have to do is evaluate those service lines that perhaps that we've had to subsidize over time. The ones that are maybe do not contribute to our positive Bottom line. But evaluating those and just finding out how we can continue to offer those things to our community without them having the positive contribution they have to have. And so the difficult things that we have to do sometimes is say, does it make sense for us to continue to do that here? Does somebody else within a reasonable distance from our facility also offer that. That same service? And does it make sense that maybe we no longer do that service and that maybe we have to refer our patients to another location to get whatever that that may be? So I think that's one of the difficult things that we have to do in healthcare all the time is make sure that we're doing what we do really well. And if it's something that we can't do anymore, then maybe we have to decide we. We can't do everything all the time here, right?
- [08:44]
B
No, absolutely. And so on the other end of the spectrum, wanted to just ask where you maybe see some of the best opportunities for organizational growth, I think.
- [08:54]
C
And it probably goes hand in hand with what we just talked talked about and what I talked about in priorities is that investment in looking at technology and the telehealth, because maybe it's something where we can no longer or we're not having any luck recruiting a provider to our area to provide the service here, but maybe it's something that we can offer through a telehealth option that's given us a lot of ability to expand our horizons quite a bit. And so able to bring that specialty care close to home, I think is definitely an opportunity for us.
- [09:30]
B
Yes, definitely. And we'd love to stay updated on that as well as it rolls out. So thank you so much again, Holly, just for this wonderful and interesting conversation today. I really do appreciate your time and look forward to working with you again soon. Thank you.