Conversations healthcare leaders are ready to have.
Myrtle Roy speaks on the operational realities of healthcare delivery — access, accountability, workforce, and what it actually takes to lead complex systems through growth and pressure.
When the System Is the Problem: Leading Healthcare Operations Through Sustained Pressure
Healthcare organizations don’t struggle because their people aren’t good enough. They struggle because their systems aren’t built for the demands placed on them. In this talk, Myrtle Roy draws on two decades of front-line and executive experience to examine how access failures, throughput breakdowns, and workforce instability compound into organizational crises — and what disciplined operational leadership can actually do about it. This is not a talk about resilience. It is a talk about accountability, structure, and the choices that determine whether a health system grows or grinds.
Health system leadership
Operational excellence forums
Urgent care & ambulatory
Multi-Site Operations
Available as a 45-minute featured keynote, 60-minute deep dive session, or 90-minute workshop.
Five areas of deep expertise
Speaking Topics
Access is a Leadership Problem — Not a Staffing One
Wait times and capacity failures are routinely blamed on staffing shortages. Myrtle challenges that framing. This talk examines the operational and governance decisions — workflow design, scheduling structures, throughput accountability — that determine patient access long before a staffing crisis arrives. Audiences leave with a sharper analysis of where their access problems actually begin.
Audience: Access & throughput · Urgent care · Ambulatory
The Governance Gap: What Operations Leaders Owe the Board
Most operational leaders are skilled at running systems — fewer are skilled at translating that work into decision-ready insight for executive and board audiences. This talk addresses the gap between operational performance and governance communication: how to present access data, workforce risk, and quality outcomes in ways that drive strategic action rather than surface-level reassurance.
Audience: Executive reporting · Governance · Board communication
Workforce Under Pressure: Leading People Through Operational Demand
Workforce instability is the defining operational challenge of this decade in healthcare. Myrtle speaks from experience leading multi-site teams through sustained high demand — examining the difference between leaders who stabilize their workforce and those who cycle through it. This talk covers performance accountability, engagement under pressure, and the organizational habits that retain people when conditions are hardest.
Audience: Workforce leadership · Retention · Performance management
Clinical Accountability in Operational Leadership
What does it mean to lead a healthcare operation with clinical integrity — not just financial performance? Myrtle brings a perspective rare among operations executives: over two decades as a bedside nurse, including emergency, trauma, and telemetry, combined with regional leadership of multi-site care delivery. This talk examines how clinical background sharpens operational judgment, and why the healthiest organizations refuse to separate care quality from operational efficiency.
Audience: Clinical-ops integration · Quality · Standards of care
Building for Growth Without Breaking What Works
New site openings, market expansion, and system integration are growth stories on paper — and operational stress tests in practice. Drawing on direct experience with multi-site expansion across Northern Virginia, Myrtle examines the operational readiness disciplines that determine whether growth strengthens a health system or exposes its weaknesses. A candid conversation about what boards approve and what operations teams actually inherit.
Audience: Growth & expansion · Multi-site ops · Operational readiness
Available Formats
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45 Minutes
Conference Featured Keynote
or Main SessionIn-person or Virtual
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60 Minutes
Deep-dive session with Q&A
In-person or Virtual
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90 Minutes
Interactive working session for leadership teams.
In-person Only
For event programs and organizer materials
Speaker Bio
Full Bio
Myrtle Roy is a healthcare operations executive and keynote speaker.
A graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute, she was commissioned as an officer in the New Mexico Army National Guard's Medical Service Corps, — the foundation of the accountability standards and operational discipline she has carried into every role since.
Over more than two decades in nursing she has worked every level of a health system: emergency, trauma, and telemetry at the bedside, then senior regional leadership as Area Director for multi-site urgent care and ambulatory operations across a major integrated health system in Northern Virginia. She led clinical operations across multiple sites through the COVID-19 response, standing up drive-through testing, treatment tents, and telemedicine under sustained staffing pressure.
She is the creator of the Anchor Leadership Framework, which holds that presence is not a personality trait but a practice — and that no leader sustains it alone.
She speaks to health systems, nursing leadership associations, and executive forums on access, accountability, workforce, and what it takes to lead complex operations under sustained pressure.
RN, BSN, MBA, PMP.
Short bio
Myrtle Roy is a healthcare operations executive and keynote speaker with more than two decades in nursing — from the emergency department floor to Area Director for multi-site urgent care and ambulatory operations across a major integrated health system. A graduate of the New Mexico Military Institute and a former commissioned officer in the New Mexico Army National Guard's Medical Service Corps, she is the creator of the Anchor Leadership Framework.
RN, BSN, MBA, PMP.
RN, BSN — Registered Nurse
Commissioned Officer — Medical Service Corps New Mexico Army National Guard
Available Nationally — In-Person and Virtual
Area Director — Multi-site Urgent Care & Ambulatory, Northern Virginia
Creator — Anchor Leadership Framework
MBA — Business & Operations
PMP — Project Management Professional
Ready to bring Myrtle to your event?
Book Myrtle Roy
Myrtle speaks for healthcare organizations, leadership forums, ambulatory and urgent care conferences, professional associations, and board-level events. She is available for keynotes, featured sessions, panel participation, and workshop formats — in-person and virtually.
To discuss availability, topic fit, and logistics, reach out directly.