2011-up-and-comers-faraaz-yousuf

Faraaz Yousuf has managed in his short career to gain experience across the country, from the suburbs around the nation's capital to the for-profit hospital capital of Nashville, from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to the West Coast. Family members in healthcare—aunts who are registered nurses or physicians, as well as a brother who is a physician—led him to the Virginia Commonwealth University master's in health administration program, Yousuf says. That program counts a very notable graduate in Richard Bracken, chairman and CEO of Nashville-based HCA. Yousuf has worked for HCA since he completed his one-year postgraduate residency at Inova Health System, Falls Church, Va. Yousuf, 34, mostly worked on strategic planning for Inova, but he was in one of its hospitals when terrorists struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, and saw some of the victims come in for treatment, an experience he describes as profound. Yousuf saw another disaster firsthand working at HCA headquarters, again in a job doing strategic planning and capital project development. His region included HCA's New Orleans-area operations, and Yousuf was part of the team that flew down on a private jet while the airport was closed to commercial flights and the city was under curfew, he says. “You saw the desolation. You saw the destruction. Empty buildings and empty sidewalks,” Yousuf says. “We saw signs from upper floors of buildings seeking help.” From headquarters, Yousuf moved to HCA's 474-bed Medical City Dallas (Texas) Hospital in 2007, first as an associate administrator and then as vice president of operations. In January 2010, Yousuf took his current job—chief operating officer of HCA's 349-bed Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, Calif. One challenge at Good Samaritan that was new to Yousuf is managing a unionized workforce, he says. “It's certainly not easy navigating some of those issues and challenges,” Yousuf says. “You're managing people, and people always want to do the right thing. That's where we find common ground.” Good Samaritan's CEO, Dr. Paul Beaupre, says Yousuf's experience at HCA's headquarters exposed him to a wide variety of markets and different ways to approach, say, a particular service line. “One of the techniques that he uses very effectively is that he likes to have the contrary view presented at the meeting to ensure that we're looking at all sides, the pros and the cons of whatever we're looking at,” Beaupre says. “I think that enriches the conversation.” For example, the hospital is working on forming an oncology partnership with physicians right now, Beaupre says. “While we were in the initial phases of that, he had someone prepare what it would be like if we didn't go down that road at all, what are the potential pitfalls of pursing that.”