November 4, 2025
Physicians as CEOs: Promise, Pitfalls, and Possibilities
The idea of physicians leading complex healthcare organizations is hardly new — but in 2025, it has re-emerged as one of the industry’s most urgent and deb
Read Insight →Executive Search Insights
The complete Insights archive.
Two decades of perspective on healthcare leadership, governance, executive search, and the business of healthcare.
November 1, 2025
Does “Good” Leadership Exist in Healthcare?
Introduction
Read Insight →October 21, 2025
3 Health Plan Hiring Archetypes & The Cost of Compromise
Talent acquisition in healthcare isn’t just a process problem—it’s a leadership challenge.
Read Insight →September 30, 2025
Transforming Culture in Healthcare Organizations
Healthcare organizations—both health plans and health systems—operate in one of the most complex, high-stakes environments in the economy. Yet many struggl
Read Insight →September 15, 2025
The Likeability Paradox: Leadership in Healthcare
Leadership in health plans is already a high-wire act, balancing regulatory pressure, medical cost inflation, risk adjustment scrutiny, government program
Read Insight →August 30, 2025
Who doesn't love a "Blues’ Shuffle?"
Is the steady flow of leaders from one Blue plan to another, the "Blues’ Shuffle", ultimately good or bad for plans, members, and the brand?
Read Insight →August 28, 2025
Health Plans Face Pharmacy Cost Surge
Employer healthcare costs are accelerating at a pace that threatens the balance of coverage, affordability, and sustainability. The Business Group on Healt
Read Insight →August 17, 2025
Why Healthcare Executives Leave: The Silent Threat Boards Ignore
Introduction Executive turnover is one of the most expensive and destabilizing risks a healthcare organization can face. Yet boards often misdiagnose why t
Read Insight →August 13, 2025
“Don’t Worry, Insurance Covers It”
Fee-for-service (FFS) payment models still dominate Medicare Part B and much of Medicare Advantage. The incentives are clear: more care delivered, more bil
Read Insight →August 8, 2025
How Wall Street Sabotages Healthcare Organizations
The Tyranny of the Quarter
Read Insight →August 5, 2025
Who’s the Villain: PBMs or Pharma?
Executive Summary
Read Insight →August 3, 2025
Nonprofit Healthcare: Do the Tax Breaks Earn Their Keep?
"No margin, no mission” is a fair mantra. But in 2025, the public and policymakers are asking whether nonprofit health systems and health plans are tr
Read Insight →July 29, 2025
When Prevention Gets Billed as Diagnosis
Preface: I know, as some of you read this, you're going to be thinking, 'McGovern, aren't you just an executive recruiter? Stay in your lane.' And I get th
Read Insight →July 25, 2025
Five Timeless Leadership Lessons for Healthcare Executives
Introduction: In a year defined by sweeping legislation, volatility, regulatory shifts, razor-thin margins, and rising workforce burnout, health plan and p
Read Insight →July 22, 2025
Succession Planning: Best Practices for Healthcare Organizations
In today’s volatile healthcare landscape, leadership continuity isn’t a luxury - it’s a strategic necessity. Succession planning ensures that payer and pro
Read Insight →July 16, 2025
Healthcare Boards in 2025 : Best Practices
Executive Summary
Read Insight →July 15, 2025
Healthcare HR in 2025: Top Six Trends & Challenges
In a business climate marked by declining margins, legislative disruption, and relentless transformation, healthcare HR leaders are being asked to do more
Read Insight →July 14, 2025
How to Recruit Mediocrity: Consensus Hiring
Consensus hiring - that is, making recruitment decisions by committee until “everyone’s okay” - sounds inclusive. But in practice, it rewards safe, unremar
Read Insight →July 9, 2025
Your best leaders are leaving. Why?
Senior executive turnover has surged across all industries in recent years, but the healthcare sector faces particularly acute challenges. Whether leading
Read Insight →July 8, 2025
Regional Payers Under Existential Pressure
When the biggest payers stumble, it’s not a warning, it’s a forecast
Read Insight →July 7, 2025
Healthcare Leaders: Impact of New Legislation
Executive Summary
Read Insight →July 1, 2025
Executive Talent Drain in Healthcare
Healthcare organizations - payer and provider - across the country are facing a leadership vacuum. A generation of experienced executives is exiting - quic
Read Insight →June 26, 2025
Healthcare Costs: Who's Profiting Most
The data speaks for itself.
Read Insight →June 24, 2025
High Healthcare Executive Turnover in 2025
2. CEO & CFO Turnover Trends
Read Insight →June 24, 2025
Medicare Advantage Under Fire: Pros & Cons
There’s no shortage of opinions on Medicare Advantage. But beneath the politics and noise, two recent data-driven studies cut through with sharp clarity -
Read Insight →June 21, 2025
Negotiating Executive Comp Packages
If you’re a senior healthcare leader actively searching for a new role, chances are you've come across a tidal wave of advice on how to negotiate an execut
Read Insight →June 19, 2025
Regional, Not-For-Profit Health Plans: We need them
Regional, not-for-profit health plans are a vital counterbalance to the dominance of national, publicly traded insurers. Rooted in local communities and dr
Read Insight →June 18, 2025
AI in Executive Search
Why healthcare executive search still demands a human touch - despite the AI hype.
Read Insight →June 17, 2025
Chief Medical Officers: Window Dressing?
Recent legislation passed in July 2025 has raised the stakes. New Medicare Advantage risk adjustment and audit provisions, tighter Medicaid redetermination
Read Insight →June 10, 2025
Blues' Plans Continue to Struggle: Why?
For decades, the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) brand has stood as a pillar of stability in the American health insurance landscape. With deep regional root
Read Insight →June 5, 2025
Psych Testing & Executive Hiring
In the high-stakes world of healthcare leadership, selecting the right executive is mission-critical. Today’s healthcare executives must balance financial
Read Insight →June 4, 2025
11 Years of McGovern Executive Search!
Since 2014, we’ve partnered with health plans, provider groups, and digital health organizations nationwide to recruit senior executives committed to impro
Read Insight →August 8, 2024
Executive Mis-hires: Avoid the High Cost
In the past 20+ years I've spent helping healthcare organizations build high-performing leadership teams, my firm has been brought in to replace executive
Read Insight →August 7, 2023
Retaining High Performers
While we all understand the importance of retaining high-performing team members, even the best leaders can lose sight of this key to organizational succes
Read Insight →July 19, 2023
Internal Candidates Warrant Special Consideration
One positive development we’ve observed over the past sixteen months is our clients’ -- healthcare payers, providers, and technology organizations -- recep
Read Insight →June 18, 2021
Big Tech in Healthcare: A Cautionary Tale
Nearly every time Amazon, Apple, Google , et al. announce some new venture into the healthcare space, my inbox and phone blow up. Payer and provider execut
Read Insight →April 30, 2021
“Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast"
A senior physician executive at a large Blues plan recently reminded me of Peter Drucker’s timeless quote. We were, as is often the case in my conversation
Read Insight →January 24, 2021
Barriers to Value Based Care Transformation: Cultural Dysfunction
I spend most of my days as the principal of my healthcare executive search firm on the phone with seasoned industry leaders. These are individuals who’ve c
Read Insight →