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When Beth Israel was on the brink
By adamg on Fri, 01/04/2008 - 12:23pm
Six years ago, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was in such bad financial shape that state Attorney General Tom Reilly was pressuring the board of trustees to sell the whole thing to a for-profit company. Paul Levy posts a copy of the first memo he sent to medical-center doctors and employees when he took over six years ago this month - and adds:
... Tom and I had had a long-term mutually respectful and friendly relationship, and I had met with him the previous week and tried to persuade him to give me a short amount of time to turn things around. He agreed, saying, "Because you are personally willing to take this on, I am willing to give you a chance." (By the way, hearing that kind of sentiment from an AG is bit intimidating!) He placed strong and sensible demands on me and the Board to produce a plan, with strict financial milestones, and a commitment to regular reports on our progress. ...
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Comments
Leadership. Compare Beth Israel Deaconess & Shattuck Hospital.
Lemuel Shattuck Hospital has repositioned itself in the community offering more than two dozen ambulatory care services specialities, geriatric care services and rehabilitaion services. Leadership is in a state of learned helplessness as are patients and front line staff. Learned helplessness meaning that the bureaucracy and budget are given as responses to any attempts at advocating institutional change and attempts at updating the organizational culture.
The question then is how to get leadership of the caliber of Paul Levy for Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Apparently there's no board of trustees nor advisory groups. The Bureau of Hospitals http://www.mass.gov/dph/hosp/burhosp.htm has been ensconced too deeply to allow institutional change and improving the organizational culture at the Shattuck Hospital.
The Public Health Council www.state.ma.us/dph/phc/phc.htm has been too removed to act on the feedback, the concerns of Shattuck Hospital stakeholders.
For example communications protocols are out of date for the times. More current telecommunications systems are needed, even telephones at bedside are needed for the geriatric surgical care rehabiltiation services' patients unable to get out of bed after surgery.
The old notoriety of services for prisoners and for mental health patients remain.
The community health services are available although there's not a good health consumerism approach incorporating feedback and concerns and prompt action on deficiencies and errors.
Thank you, Don
For proving you can actually write coherently and in complete sentences. Keep it up!
See also
See also
http://friendsofthelshgeriatricservices.blogspot.com