MEET IHCF
The ideas behind IHCF are
rooted in one belief:
finance is the shared language
of healthcare leadership.
Empowering Healthcare Leaders with Financial Insights
What IHCF Believes
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Healthcare leaders make decisions every day that affect patients, employees, operations, and entire communities. Yet many step into leadership roles without ever being taught how healthcare finance actually works.
That gap inspired the creation of the Institute for Healthcare Finance.
IHCF exists to make healthcare finance understandable - not by simplifying it, but by translating it into practical knowledge leaders can use immediately. Through education, speaking, workshops, and organizational partnerships, we help leaders connect financial understanding to the decisions they make every day.
Finance is the shared language of healthcare leadership.
When leaders speak the same language, better decisions follow.
Operations create revenue; culture creates margin.
Financial performance is built through everyday leadership decisions.
The numbers are the outcome; the decisions happened earlier.
Great leaders shape results before the reports are published.
Every healthcare leader deserves to understand the system they lead.
Financial knowledge shouldn’t be reserved for finance teams
Complex ideas can be taught simply.
Practical understanding beats unnecessary complexity.
Financial performance exists to serve the mission.
Strong organizations create better access, better care, and healthier communities.
HILARY WHITTINGTON KERBER
Founder + Educator.
The story behind the work
I did not set out to work in healthcare.
I work in healthcare because I learned what financial sustainability actually means for a community. Early in my career, while serving as an auditor and reimbursement consultant for rural hospitals across the Pacific Northwest, I realized this work wasn’t about spreadsheets or budgets. Solid financial performance meant the hospital stayed open, and services grew. When babies were born, their families could be together; and when someone’s final moments arrived, they were surrounded by the people they loved.
That belief has shaped everything I’ve done since.
From public accounting, to serving as CFO and CAO of one of Washington’s largest critical access hospitals, to leading finance and strategy for one of the region’s largest cardiovascular institutes, I’ve had the opportunity to see healthcare from many different perspectives. Regardless of the organization or the role, I kept seeing the same challenge.
We ask physicians, operational leaders, and executives to improve financial performance without ever teaching them how the financial system actually works. We hold people accountable for outcomes without giving them a shared language for making decisions.
That reality inspired the Institute for Healthcare Finance.
I believe finance is the shared language of healthcare leadership. When clinical, operational, and executive leaders understand that language, conversations change. Better decisions follow. Organizations become stronger. Communities gain more reliable access to the care they deserve.
The Institute exists to make healthcare finance practical, approachable, and useful for every leader - not just those who work in finance. When leaders understand how the system works, they create healthier organizations that can continue caring for their communities for generations.
STU KERBER
Strategist.
Building the organization behind the mission
Great ideas only create change when they’re built to last.
While Hilary focuses on education, speaking, and working alongside healthcare leaders, Stu focuses on building the Institute itself. He leads the strategic and operational development of IHCF, creating the systems, partnerships, and infrastructure that allow the organization’s work to grow while maintaining the personal, practical approach that defines it.
With a background in finance, business strategy, and organizational development, Stu brings a builder’s mindset to every aspect of the Institute. From technology and operations to new programs and strategic partnerships, he works to ensure IHCF can deliver meaningful impact today while creating a foundation for long-term growth.
Together, Hilary and Stu believe healthcare doesn’t need more complexity. It needs leaders who understand how the system works, have the confidence to make difficult decisions, and are equipped with practical tools they can use immediately.
The Institute for Healthcare Finance was built around that belief: combining real-world healthcare leadership with thoughtful business strategy to help organizations strengthen financial performance, improve access to care, and better serve the communities that depend on them.
Experience Behind IHCF
The leadership, financial, and organizational experience that shapes the work.
IHCF brings together firsthand healthcare executive leadership and deep experience in finance, investment, strategy, and organizational growth. That combination shapes how we teach, build partnerships, and translate financial understanding into stronger decisions.
Healthcare leadership across complex organizations
Hilary’s experience spans public accounting and reimbursement consulting, rural and critical access hospital leadership, and CFO, CAO, and president-level roles across hospitals, health systems, and complex physician and clinical enterprises.
Health-system institute expertise
Her work includes financial, strategic, and operational leadership across multiple specialty institutes within a large integrated health system—bringing experience with multisite operations, physician leadership, service-line strategy, access, growth, and organizational performance.
Finance, investment, and capital strategy
Stu brings extensive experience in banking, investment structures, asset management, acquisitions, brokerage, debt placement, credit analysis, and private equity solutions. His work has helped organizations secure capital, evaluate opportunities, finance expansion, and strengthen long-term financial resilience.
Strategy, growth, and organizational development
Together, Hilary and Stu bring complementary perspectives to IHCF. Hilary leads the educational vision and translates healthcare finance through real operating experience. Stu helps identify new markets, develop partnerships, evaluate opportunities, and build the systems and strategy that allow the Institute to grow sustainably.
Leadership education grounded in practice
IHCF’s curriculum reflects experience teaching and working with executives, operational leaders, physicians, APPs, nursing leaders, finance teams, and governing boards. The work is designed around the decisions healthcare leaders are already making—not finance in the abstract.
Systems thinking beyond the workplace
As private pilots, Hilary and Stu share an appreciation for preparation, situational awareness, disciplined communication, and recognizing how one decision can affect an entire system. That perspective naturally reinforces IHCF’s practical approach to leadership, risk, and decision-making.
The result is an Institute built from two complementary forms of expertise: understanding how healthcare organizations operate and understanding how strong organizations are financed, structured, and built to last.
