Big Picture Healthcare Articles

With the focus on rising healthcare costs, it is easy for healthcare executives to be distracted away from issues of conflicts of interest and poor management practices. Yet, healthcare executives whose management results have been less than stellar need to develop proactive strategies to address ethical issues brought up by recent corporate scandals, especially as healthcare consumerism is on the rise.

While the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is focused on stockholder rights, the message for healthcare leadership is that management is accountable to ALL of the stakeholders it serves. Decisions made in a vacuum will be re-examined. Finding innovative approaches to cost-effective healthcare is still the highest priority mandate for healthcare executives, but the additional message from Sarbanes-Oxley is that cost justification alone is not sufficient rationale for (marginally appropriate) treatment decisions.

Healthcare decision-making, incentives and metrics have been generally made behind closed doors. These practices can lead to charges of scandal. Meanwhile, many healthcare execs have become as financially aggressive as Enron executives. Healthcare organizations have developed cultures driven by accounting metrics, at the expense of treatment best practice. Does this provide a basis for integrity and trust?

Healthcare is complex in terms of stakeholders. Patients, insurers, HMOs, PPOs, employers, hospitals, physicians, alternative providers, pharmaceutical companies, government and healthcare employees all have a stake in healthcare excellence. The wide range of stakeholders means that everyone has a vested interest in the outcome of healthcare change and reform. And everyone OTHER than healthcare execs is proposing changes to support THEIR vested interests.

It is time for healthcare executives who understand many of these issues the best to stop hiding behind closed doors and to be proactive, strategic and take a stand. How can healthcare execs become the thought leaders in solving healthcare challenges? They need to put excellence back in their job description. To be taken seriously, they need to pay attention to ALL stakeholder groups and to act with integrity, not just supporting their own issues. Healthcare executives need to start looking at the bigger picture.

What does looking at the bigger picture mean? It means:

What are the benefits of thinking bigger picture for the healthcare executive?

For the first time in 20 years, healthcare executives can be leaders, strategic, proactive and ahead of the game to control their own destiny, instead of being reactive, which by definition means they are behind and playing catch-up ball. And by paying attention to all affected stakeholders, and leading with integrity, they shall be paid the professional respect they deserve. What a powerful professional vision.