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Becker’s Healthcare Podcast
Strengthening Leadership and Retention at UVA Physicians Group with Lisa Hudnall
00:14:50
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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. We're looking forward to hosting you in Chicago.
- [00:32]
B
This is Laura Dardo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by Lisa Hudnall, Chief Human Resources Officer at UVA Physicians Group. Lisa, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- [00:43]
C
Thank you so much, Laura. It's an honor to be here.
- [00:46]
B
Now, I'm excited for our conversation because I know there's a lot going on in healthcare and particularly some cool things you're doing at uva. And so I'm looking forward to connecting and learning more, as well as gaining your perspective on the future. But before we dig in, can you tell me a little bit more about yourself and UVA Physicians Group?
- [01:03]
C
Sure. Happy to. So, as you said, I'm the Chief Human Resources Officer for University of Virginia Physicians Group. We are the faculty practice plan for UVA Health. We're a nonprofit affiliated foundation of UVA and support a very large and complex physician enterprise delivering care, education, medical research, and across the Commonwealth of Virginia.
- [01:33]
B
Got it. That makes a lot of sense. And, you know, it's a really interesting and unique position to have there, you know, with the academic health system and serving the community. So, you know, when you think about the last year or so, can you tell me about an important initiative that you led? What did you do and what were the results?
- [01:50]
C
That's a great question. I love that question. There were so many important initiatives that we had in 2025, but I would say the most important initiative truly was strengthening our leadership effectiveness and operational discipline across UPG during a period of growth and constraint at the same time. So what we did at UPG was further clarified leadership expectations. We did that through training and ongoing personalized meetings. It was really important for us to be connected, personally connected to the leaders within the organization and have that connection point, ongoing communication and presence as we walked them through these new expectations, the higher standards that we were setting. But it really tightened the alignment between HR operations and clinical priorities. And as a result of those improvements, we've already seen improvements in engagement in some targeted areas, definitely some more consistent onboarding and leadership Practices have really helped with our retention rates. Our turnover has decreased already by more than 5% as we've worked on this leadership development and consistent onboarding with the leaders. Other things that we've really been able to see as fruit of our labor in 2025 is those improved engagement scores. So we're really looking at engagement scores with a priority of the leadership domain. And we've seen that engagement score rise by nearly a point and a half, which is pretty phenomenal when you think about how much of an impact that leadership, the leader development really has on engagement. And that really was evident in those engagement scores. We've been able to improve the time to productivity through standardized onboarding with physicians. So really tightening that up and getting folks ready, getting them the tools that they need to be successful on day one and after. And just as importantly, we've improved our ability to address people risks earlier. Right. Which reduces that downstream operational and financial disruption.
- [04:26]
B
That's fascinating to hear. And you know, it seems like an all hands approach to really improving some of the things you talked about at the beginning. Making sure you've got the clinicians and team that feels well taken care of and has the opportunity to focus on the right things so they can build their careers. With standardized onboarding and leadership training. It feels like it makes a big difference. I'm curious, as you were going through a lot of that and you know, having those standard expectations and figuring out, you know, what was needed from each leader on the team to continue to grow and challenge their, their colleagues to step up, what were some of the unlocks that you found or what were some of the things that, you know, you were able to now incorporate into the standardized processes or the things that have made a big difference, I think in the engagement and the retention for the team too would be fascinating to hear about some of the things that came up within those discussions and that you were actually able to implement.
- [05:33]
C
Yeah. So I'll share the most surprising to me, as we were speaking with the leaders across upglobal was this misunderstanding that, you know, improved leadership skills or sharpening of those skills took a lot of time. And of course the last thing that we want to do right is add more to the plate of these very busy leaders, physician leaders, they're leading clinics, they're leading departments within the medical center. So the last thing we want to do is add more time. So it was really interesting to have that dialogue and that conversation to say these are very small things that you can implement into your day as it is already Right. We're not asking you to do more. Just edit the things that you've already got in place. For instance, having consistent one on ones with team members. So those were in play, they're in process. So what we did with the leaders was just tighten that one on one experience. How are those going? What are the questions that you're asking? What, what is the feedback that you're looking for from these employees and really building that trust during that one on one time with the employee for them to allow them to share their feedback and open up with the leader as they continued forward. So really truly honing in on those things that were already happening and just tightening those up. And once the leaders understood that, no, no, we're not adding more to your plate, it was much, much better received and they are much more engaged. And you know, truly it's, you know, one on ones or showing appreciation, a thank you, a smile. Right. So those things that are, that are easy to implement throughout the day.
- [07:43]
B
I love that. That's such great advice and, you know, really thoughtful and insightful. When you think about how leaders across the organization are showing up for their teams now, when you look ahead, what do you see as being some of the big priorities and headwinds that you're focused on for the next year?
- [08:00]
C
Yeah, I think, you know, in 2026 we're really going to be faced with, I think the, the same headwinds that we were in 25. And that's the workforce sustainability, you know, clinician burnout and that continued margin pressure. These directly affect quality, access and financial performance. So our priority again in 2026 is continuing to build upon that leadership depth, stabilizing some key segments of the workforce and investing in systems such as AI. There's a lot of AI systems that we're piloting at the moment, but investing in those systems to assist us in reducing that burnout and avoidable turnover. So from a metric standpoint, we're really focused on retention and those critical roles. Again, the engagement trends tied to leadership effectiveness and essentially reducing the cost of disruption caused by vacancy and burnout. You know, if we can tackle that burnout right away before it happens, then it's saving us so much on the back end. When you think about replacing a physician, for instance, you know, that cost could be 500,000 and upward into the millions depending on the specialty of those providers. So it's a huge cost on the back end. When you're thinking about turnover and you're thinking about replacing those folks, we're really trying to work on the front end and invest in the front end.
- [09:47]
B
That's really interesting to hear and it's definitely such a great point. When you're looking at costs and as you mentioned, margin pressure moving into the future, being able to have a stable team in place makes a big difference in the cost to bring on a new person and especially a physician in the clinical team is, you know, pretty significant. So when you're looking at all of those things, in seeing some of these headwinds as well as opportunities ahead, what do you think the hardest thing you'll have to do in the coming year will be?
- [10:17]
C
I believe it's going to be continued support of our leaders. Right. There's going to be trade offs that we're going to have to make, but continuing to maintain that trust and performance. Financial realities mean that we really have to prioritize relentlessly and that includes sometimes making decisions that may slow growth in some areas while protecting the leadership and workforce capabilities that really drive those long term results. So the risk of not doing that is again, higher turnover, lower engagement and increased operational volatility. So really, to put a finer point on that, short term savings can create long term workforce risk if we're not very careful and very intentional.
- [11:13]
B
That makes a lot of sense and I love that idea of being so intentional with what you're doing and deciding what you do want to go after further and some of the things, you know, that may not be a top priority and so may have slower growth. That's just a really fascinating way of looking at that. And you know, when you think about that leadership team that you've been growing and working with, whether it's your C suite, colleagues in, you know, that next level of management leaders, how do you make sure everybody's on the same page when understanding, you know, what you're prioritizing, what you're really, truly need to focus on in order to meet all the needs of the workforce and the team as well as understanding the financial realities of today.
- [11:56]
C
Yeah, and that's the question, right? Getting everybody to buy in. And I believe if we're able to align culture and strategy, pair those two together and be able to show how much the culture can truly have an impact on the strategy and where we want to go and grow into the future, future. Showing that evidence, showing the numbers, the financial impact has really, truly been extremely helpful for me and for my team to connect the dots and to get everybody on the same page, rowing in the same direction, working for the same goal and truly, you know, setting that expectation. So this, this is the culture that we are setting forth. And so if there are leaders or folks in the organization that potentially are not on board with that new standard, how can we pivot and maybe find other opportunities for that leader?
- [13:06]
B
That makes sense. Thank you for digging a bit deeper there. Now, before we wrap up, I wanted to ask about growth too. Where do you see some of the best opportunities for organizational growth?
- [13:15]
C
Yeah, so staying on the leadership topic, I really, truly believe the biggest opportunity is improving leadership effectiveness at scale. You know, when leaders are clear, capable, accountable, supportive, transparent, and able to really gain the trust from the folks that they serve, we truly do see better engagement and stronger retention, and that directly impacts quality and predictable performance. So, you know, there's, there's, as I said previously, there's definitely an upside in aligning culture and strategy and ensures that decisions reflect our values even under pressure, external or internal pressures, and that alignment reduces friction, execution on decisions are more effective and timely and really strengthens the trust across the organization.
- [14:19]
B
I love that. Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. This has been a fascinating discussion. I really appreciate your perspective here, and I look forward to seeing you at our annual meeting in April. I know you'll be speaking on a panel and it'll be great to dig a little bit deeper into many of these themes and then find opportunities to connect with one another and learn from each other. So I'm looking forward to it.
- [14:40]
C
Thank you. Yes, I as well, I love the Becker's Healthcare Conference is always something that I look forward to.