When you're at an event featuring some 40 C-level leaders, you can bet that you'll walk away with more than a few nuggets of wisdom to consider and even some strategies you can try to implement. So it was with this year's Top Leadership Teams in Healthcare conference.

In 2004, the senior management team at Cabell Huntington (WV) Hospital decided it was time for some major upgrades at the 268-staffed-bed teaching facility. Some areas of the physical plant had not been significantly updated since the 1950s, and the hospital's culture was also in need of repair after suffering a contract-related work stoppage.

HealthLeaders Media 2008 kicked off with a panel entitled "Lay Waste to Waste: How to cut the cost of doing business." Healthcare administration makes up 30 cents of every dollar spent on care, in large part because healthcare has been slow to adapt to techniques that can successfully cut the cost of doing business. But that doesn't mean that there aren't many who can teach valuable lessons about providing value to patients, which was essentially the focus of the panel.

John Erickson's goal has always been to create a nurturing, caring, comprehensive retirement community. That was his dream when he opened his first Erickson Retirement Community in the Baltimore area in 1983, and that was the reason his company partnered with EverCare/UnitedHealthcare to create Erickson Advantage Health Plan.