Why should our industry expect success?

Several of us are lucky to be on a weekly email message list from Gene Lindsey, former CEO of Atrius Health, the largest multi-specialty group in Massachusetts. Drawing on a variety of life situations, Gene is always able to make connections and comments about the state of our health care system. Although he generally refers to issues in the US, his comments are applicable to other jurisdictions as well. This week, he asks and then answers a question, and then he offers a concise summary of the attributes needed in health care delivery organizations. Let's consider his advice after reviewing two descriptions I have offered elsewhere:After her fifteen year-old son Lewis Blackman died from a series of preventable medical errors, Helen Haskell diagnosed the problems in the hospital by saying, “This was a system that was operating for its own benefit.” What she meant was that each person in the hospital was unthinkingly engaged in a series of tasks that had become disconnected from the underlying purpose of the hospital. They were driven by their inclinations and imperatives rather than by the patient’s needs. Indeed, they were so trapped in that form of work that they could not notice the entreaties of a seriously concerned mother as her son deteriorated. Or that of a Harvard business professor who described the financial imperatives of many hospitals in a less personalized, but analogous fashion. He called hospitals “business cost structures in search of rev...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs