Mission Drives Margin: A Former CEO’s Playbook to Fix Broken Healthcare
Rick Rawson is a former senior healthcare executive with 40 years experience leading healthcare systems. In this episode, he explains why cutting costs and chasing transactions made hospitals weaker—and how a community-first, mission-driven strategy tripled revenue, rebuilt trust, and grew access across rural towns.
Episode Summary
Every hospital consultant will tell you to cut costs, reduce services, and focus on high-margin procedures. Rick Rawson spent 40 years proving them wrong. In this conversation, he explains why cost-cutting healthcare strategy destroys the trust and community loyalty that sustain health systems long-term — and what a mission-first approach actually looks like in practice. His stories of tripling revenue by doing the opposite of what MBAs recommend are equal parts inspiring and infuriating. This is essential listening for anyone who believes healthcare leaders have no choice but to play by the existing rules.
Books & Resources Mentioned
About the Guest
Rick Rawson
Former Senior Healthcare Executive · 40 Years Hospital Leadership
Rick Rawson spent four decades as a senior healthcare executive, including as CEO of multi-hospital health systems serving rural communities. Over a career spanning community hospitals and regional systems, he developed a contrarian playbook: when other executives cut costs and chased higher-margin procedures, he invested in mission, community access, and the services that made the most difference to the most vulnerable. The result was systems that tripled revenue and outperformed competitors who followed conventional wisdom.