'This shift to accountability and value is going to come up in any reform proposal'

On May 15, Mike Slubowski, currently CEO of the $2.7 billion SCL Health with a dozen hospitals in Colorado, Kansas and Montana, becomes chief operating officer of Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, a system about six times larger. He will be serving CEO Dr. Richard Gilfillan, who has pledged to turn the nation's second-largest Catholic- sponsored health system into a proving ground for the value-based care models he helped shape while leading the CMS' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Editor Merrill Goozner spoke with Slubowski last week about the major challenges in his new role and the special challenges faced by exurban hospitals such as the ones he ran at SCL during 61/2 years there. The following is an edited transcript.