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George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente Reveals the Most Important Thing CEOs - and People - Can Do to Cut Healthcare Costs to Robert Reiss on The CEO TV Show

George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, reveals the most important thing CEOs and people can do to cut healthcare costs on this week’s CEO TV Show. Halvorson provides his view on the role of the CEO, what CEOs should do about healthcare costs, and his recommended model for better healthcare in America. Halvorson also discusses the need for a company to balance its internal and external focus, and goes on to identify three other specific things that CEOs should to control healthcare costs.

Ridgefield, CT, September 08, 2011 --(PR.com)-- George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente, reveals the most important thing CEOs can do to cut healthcare costs to host Robert Reiss on this week’s CEO TV Show. Halvorson, as CEO of the nation's largest nonprofit health plan and hospital system, has a unique vantage point serving over 8 million members in 9 states and the District of Columbia.

In an in-depth conversation with Reiss, Halvorson provides his view on the role of the CEO, what CEOs should do about healthcare costs, and what ultimately the model for better healthcare in America should be. Halvorson says, "The CEO is accountable for the total success of the organization. He doesn't do it alone, and sometimes he has to emphasize strategy, and sometimes teamwork, but he's accountable. Ultimately the job comes down to having the right people and making sure the team wins. There is no substitute for having the right people; you can have a perfect strategy, but with the wrong people you will fail."

One of the other keys, Halvorson explains, is ensuring the executive team balances internal and external focus, with external focus more important. "We require our senior executives to attend trade shows on a regular basis, not to listen to the speeches, but to visit the exhibitor's stands. That's where the exhibitors are selling the next generation of solutions for the future. They're always full of new ideas. So we focus on that a lot."

When Reiss asks "What should CEOs do about controlling healthcare costs?" Halvorson names three:

"First, companies have to provide their employees with 'team-care.'"

“Second, they should shift their focus away from dealing with medical problems; they have to focus on the health of their employees, not just provide for their sicknesses. Making employees healthy cuts their costs more effectively than just dealing with the sicknesses.”

“And third,” Halvorson relates, “the most important thing that CEOs can do is cultivate a ‘culture of walking’ within their company."

"Walking is almost magical," Halvorson explains. "If you walk 30 minutes a day - that can be 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at night - five times a week, it can cut diabetes by 50%, heart attacks by 1/3rd, strokes by 1/3rd, and even cancer by 1/3rd. And it has a huge impact on depression, too."

For more insights into how to solve some of the nation's healthcare problems, listen to the full interview at www.ceoshow.tv.

Background

The CEO TV Show, a service of The CEO Show (www.ceoshow.com), is a weekly program based on a series of video interviews with top CEOs who have changed the fabric of American society hosted by Robert Reiss. In addition to being available at the website above, it is also hosted on a number of affiliate websites, including ACG New York, Vistage, Entrepreneurs Organization, Small Giants, Senn Delaney, and others. The CEO TV Show is sponsored by IBM, Senn Delaney, Sodexo, and Inter-Continental Hotels.

For more information, contact: Patric Hale, General Manager, "The CEO Show" (patric@ceoshow.com) www.ceoshow.com, www.ceoshow.tv.

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