David Nosacka spent his first six weeks as executive vice president and CFO of Morristown, N.J.-based Atlantic Health visiting each of the system’s eight hospitals.
Mr. Nosacka, who joined Atlantic Health in August, has since mixed in visits to the system’s ambulatory sites, supply chain distribution center, physician clinics and reference lab. He told Becker’s the point of meeting people at their place of work is to hear what is working, what is not and how the finance team can better support them.
“I want people to feel like I’m approachable,” he said. “So that when they do have a problem or a question, they don’t feel intimidated by messaging me or emailing me or seeing me in the hall.”
Mr. Nosacka said it is an instinct that goes back to growing up in Louisiana as one of eight children. He said that level of closeness, where talking things through was the norm, drew him to that kind of connection with people.
Another priority for Mr. Nosacka is to build on the financial success Atlantic Health has sustained before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to joining Atlantic, he served as senior vice president and CFO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit’s Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Tacoma, Wash. He also served as system vice president and Illinois CFO for Hospital Sisters Health System in Springfield, Ill.
Mr. Nosacka said Washington state and the Seattle market were hit hard during and after the pandemic, and he is using those lessons to tackle a different challenge: building energy around opportunity rather than crisis.
“I don’t have a burning platform, but what I do have is so many opportunities if we can accelerate growth or accelerate some investments to improve our clinical care, or we need to expand for some additional sites of care where we’ve got unmet need,” he said.
Over the next three to five years, Mr. Nosacka said he is focused on helping service lines on the cusp of national recognition at Atlantic Health clear that bar, whether through people, process or technology. He is also zeroing in on care models as the system confronts nursing shortages, recruitment challenges in certain physician specialties and questions about the right site of care, including its digital front door and AI.
All eight of Atlantic Health’s hospitals are within about two hours of each other, which Mr. Nosacka said makes it easier to share knowledge across campuses and scale tools such as AI and virtual care.
“We have such a great foundation,” he said. “When we do start to scale things over the next three to five years in these service lines, the foundation’s there. Now we’re just adding building blocks on top.”
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