Opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent
the official positions of the GSM Institute. —Clay Sherman
Health Executive's Contrarian Edge
My column, Contrarian Edge, appears monthly in Inside Healthcare, formerly Health Executive, clearly the best reporting on what real leaders are doing to run better hospitals. I love these folks, chiefly because they let me say the unthinkable and it's cheaper than therapy! I hope you will enjoy my efforts to be outside the proverbial box.
Confessions of a Consultant."Can we talk? I need to get some stuff off my chest. In 1978, I entered hospital consulting after 11 years working for Big Pharma. I found the state of hospital management in a time warp, significantly behind management practice in Fortune 500 companies. A lot of things have improved between then and now, but one deadly addiction remains—American healthcare is excessively consultant dependent...
The Idiocy of Layoffs."Plagues periodically swept through Europe during the Middle Ages, killing and disfiguring tens of thousands as the infection took hold in one village after another. In the economic bad times of the mid- to late 1990s, a plague, borne by its consultant carriers, was visited upon healthcare providers—the dreaded layoff...
Management Malpractice."In the 1990s, business schools were confronted with research that showed their vaunted management programs weren’t producing executives capable of getting business results. Said Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, “There is little evidence that mastery of the knowledge acquired in business schools enhances people’s careers,...
Six Sigma Stop Sign"Here we go again. Six Sigma, lean—the latest labels on the fad
diet table. Good for you, or just another program of the month? For most hospitals, the answer is that it’s bad because the implementation will fail, and it could be the kiss of death for your at-risk career...
Whose Standards? Mom's or the Joint Commission's?"Chicken. It’s what we used to say to our buddies on the playground when they wouldn’t jump from the jungle gym. One of the things you learned back then was that it wasn’t cool to hang too far back, that risk and achievement would forever be part of life’s equation...
Sludge Removal. Dizzy Dean, the great Detroit Tigers player and broadcaster, once described a runner thrown out at second base this way: “That feller spent too much time running in one place!” If that sounds like your typical day, read on...
Problem Employee or Problem Manager?"Problem employees represent 3% to 8% of many hospitals’ payrolls. Yet their actual cost to the organization is approximately eight times their payroll cost in excessive lost time, medical claims, quality problems, lower productivity, and negative morale impacts. Can you afford these people?...
Management Flight Check. Michael Jordan was famously quoted as saying he didn’t worry about whether the Bulls would win a championship at the end of the season. He
focused instead on whether he had worked hard enough in today's practice...
Where’s the Urgency for the Emergency? All I know is what I read in the
papers. A recent issue of the AARP Bulletin had as its cover story, “Digital Medical Records Could Save Your Life—So Why Don’t We Have ThemYet?”...
Management Credo. “We the People…” “I pledge allegiance…” One of the hallmarks of effective leadership is the ability to provide needed direction by putting into a few words the core values required by the mission. Nowhere is that more important than in American healthcare...
Other Opinions
I've been disappointed bigtime with JCAHO for 3 reasons:
They basically don't get management—instead of setting objectives and deadlines, they have turned into micromanagers of what hospitals do.
They have wasted millions of dollars by mandating programs that have resulted in failure after failure. From ORYX to TQM they lurch from one half-baked approach to another.
Even worse, JCAHO is the prime enunciator of minimalist standards—philosophically they couldn't be further from what excellence is all about.
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