Laurie McGraw is speaking with Inspiring Woman Elizabeth Kirk, a senior vice president at Strata Decision Technology.  Liz has spent her career at the intersection of healthcare process automation and optimization to deliver significant financial returns.  Working across teams on complex issues remains a passion.  Personal tragedy, a health diagnosis, and major job changes – Liz has had to face several incredible inflection points.  These all shaped her outlook on work and have led to strengthened resolve and commitment to making a difference.

What you will hear in this episode:

• The sudden death of Liz’s fiancé was life altering. Throwing herself into work was Liz’s coping mechanism.
  
• In a job she loved, Liz had an unexpected meeting with GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt. That gave her critical information as to what she thought might be possible with her division.  She learned it was time to make a move.
  
• Meeting other incredible life moments. Like being fired for being pregnant.  Hard to imagine that this can happen (it’s illegal BTW…) but it happened to Liz.
  
• And dealing with her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Healthy today, Liz is thankful for some early time with her daughter.  As challenging as this may be, Liz believes this has led to an even deeper connection and commitment to the impact of her work on healthcare organizations.
  
• It is very important to Liz to get up every day to a job she loves. And what she loves most?  Seeing and then fixing problems and doing this by working cross-functionally.
  

You can follow Liz on LinkedIn.

*****************************

Liz Kirk is the Senior Vice President of Strategic Services at Strata Decision Technology. With over 15 years of experience working with healthcare providers, both as a hospital administrator and a consultant, Liz’s role includes leadership of Strata’s Client Services team, as well as work in product and strategy for the company. Liz’s work in developing the Continuous Improvement application at Strata was recognized with the prestigious Chicago Innovation Award in 2014 and has recently been recognized by Becker’s Healthcare as one of the top “Female Health IT Leaders to Know” and one of the top “Female Vendor Financial Management Leaders to Know” in 2018.

Prior to joining Strata, Liz was responsible for cost reduction and revenue improvement at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, IL where she successfully led an enterprise-wide project to reduce $220 million of operating expense while improving clinical performance.  Liz was instrumental in developing revenue cycle consulting and technology services at Accretive Health and in starting the Revenue Cycle and Financial Improvement practice at GE Healthcare Performance Solutions. She began her career at Deloitte Consulting working with both payers and providers.

Liz is a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a Master Change Agent. She earned a MBA and MHA at the University of Minnesota and a BS in Finance at Trinity University in Texas.