Running a hospital: Final budget decisions

Running a hospital: Final budget decisions.

Running a hospital: Good progress in budget deliberations.

In his "Running a Hospital" blog, Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, writes two particularly remarkable posts concerning the decision-making process leading to budgetary cuts in these lean times for his hospital.  The posts are note-worthy due to the steps taken, the transparency through which the cuts are communicated (effectively to the world), and what appears to be the level of buy-in generated by the hospital management, personnel and medical staff.

Mr. Levy also posts that the accolades he is receiving are misplaced.  The process and the values demonstrated by the budgetary cuts, according to him, are more a reflection of the hospital's community, then necessarily, his leadership.  Of interest to me, he references, in current events, a quote (that I also took) from Thomas Friedman's recent op-ed, although focuses this, again, more on the institution's own values as merely reflected by leadership, rather than leadership instilling the leader's values on the organization.  Truth is probably somewhere in between.  Very much worth a read.