Case Beth Israel Harvard
Beth Israel Case
Date 09-02-2011
Beth Israel
Beth Israel Hospital (BI) in Boston, Massachusetts, is a hospital with a three-faceted identity. First of all it is a hospital for patients from Boston and the surroundings. The second role is as a research institution and the last role is as a trainings institution where Harvard Medical School faculty members can be trained.
Despite the hospital is one of the best, some people called the organization “an unruly mob”. Malcom Weinier, vice president of clinical and support services, told that the BI hospital has a structure that’s typical for a hospital. “It is part hierarchy, part team, and part matrix, but more team than anything else.” It works like a strong triangle, a nurse, an administrator and a physician manages the service. The hierarchy is for getting things done, the team is for communication.
Industry issues
In the medical world, the quality thinking is penetrated. This leads to different types of questions and issues like: how can we measure quality, how to handle the enormous pressure of time, how can we pay and which hospital is the best for certain complaints.
The Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) shifted its attention from auditing safety regulations to insisting that hospitals review all the cases for quality and act on the results. Hospitals are struggling with the question how can we measure quality. In the next paragraphs we will tell more about it.
What happened in the BI hospital characterizes the industry. The increasing attention on quality and the reducing of costs ensures pressure on nurses and physicians to rapidly move the patient through the system. It has a negative impact on the quality and the patient is being treated as an number instead of a human being. Another issue, maybe correlated with time pressure, is the responsibility of physicians for the patient. A lot of patients are stuck in a web of specialists and are
Date 09-02-2011
Beth Israel
Beth Israel Hospital (BI) in Boston, Massachusetts, is a hospital with a three-faceted identity. First of all it is a hospital for patients from Boston and the surroundings. The second role is as a research institution and the last role is as a trainings institution where Harvard Medical School faculty members can be trained.
Despite the hospital is one of the best, some people called the organization “an unruly mob”. Malcom Weinier, vice president of clinical and support services, told that the BI hospital has a structure that’s typical for a hospital. “It is part hierarchy, part team, and part matrix, but more team than anything else.” It works like a strong triangle, a nurse, an administrator and a physician manages the service. The hierarchy is for getting things done, the team is for communication.
Industry issues
In the medical world, the quality thinking is penetrated. This leads to different types of questions and issues like: how can we measure quality, how to handle the enormous pressure of time, how can we pay and which hospital is the best for certain complaints.
The Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations (JCAHO) shifted its attention from auditing safety regulations to insisting that hospitals review all the cases for quality and act on the results. Hospitals are struggling with the question how can we measure quality. In the next paragraphs we will tell more about it.
What happened in the BI hospital characterizes the industry. The increasing attention on quality and the reducing of costs ensures pressure on nurses and physicians to rapidly move the patient through the system. It has a negative impact on the quality and the patient is being treated as an number instead of a human being. Another issue, maybe correlated with time pressure, is the responsibility of physicians for the patient. A lot of patients are stuck in a web of specialists and are