American-Hospitals--Averting-a-Crisis-in-Declining-Revenue

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American Hospitals--Averting a Crisis in Declining Revenue

By: Jan Jennings, President and CEO of American Healthcare Solutions

Published June 2011 (Click to download PDF version)

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation identified in the early 1930s that the management of hospitals needed to be improved and the American College of Hospital Administrators (now the American College of Healthcare Executives) was formed in 1933. In the period from 1933 to 1954, ten programs in healthcare administration were formed. There is a dispute among alumni programs as to which program was first. My vote goes to the Kellogg School at Northwestern University although people of honest endeavor interest disagree . vigorously. I graduated from the Graduate Program in Health Administration at the University of Pittsburgh; the first Graduate School of Public Health in the United States.

Over the years, curricula of these programs have changed dramatically. Further, there are many organizations that provide varied and spectacular programs to assist healthcare executives to remain current and relevant. Among these organizations, the American College of Healthcare Executives is, far and away, first among equals.

One maxim that has remained unchanged is the following: The typical hospital CEO or CEO of an Integrated Healthcare Delivery Network (IHDN) is a general manager. There are, of course, hospital CEOs or IHDN CEOs who understand the engineering of the American hospital at the granular level and have strong control systems that give them control over operating details. I have met five such CEOs in my career spanning over forty years.

Over the last ten years I have learned that hospital and IHDN CEOs sadly (self included) have found it difficult to keep up with the spectacular complexity that has slowly emerged in the American hospital or Integrated Healthcare Delivery Network. This reminds me of baseball, a far less complex organizational framework compared to hospitals. Brian Cashman is the General Manager of the New York Yankees. His impact on the team’s win/loss record is highly diffused through a somewhat complex hierarchy of owners and other management layers.

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