Hospitals that Care Enough to Make A Difference

A couple nice stories about hospitals in the news this week. The first story you may have already seen, as it was the number one story emailed on the internet for a day or two this week. After each month posting my desperate hospitals series, this is refreshing to see the human touch has not been lost and seeing people still making a difference. Nice use of a chat room to bring everyone together for solutions and explaining the logic of the decision made for all. One good comment made: CEO’s can’t hold all the answers and you need to seek out others on the team for the solutions too, perhaps something a few other CEOs might give some thought.

The second post below is about another hospital, Emerson outside of Boston, coming to the rescue with taking over the medical records files from a doctor who quit the practice and left everything in the hands of a moving and storage company, who had no results when contacting the local government and the hospital had to get a court order to get the patient medical records.

At Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, more than 400 positions have been saved thanks to executives taking lower salaries and employees offering donations. The hospital's CEO, Paul Levy, recently told spoke with me about how he and his staff worked together to save as many jobs as possible. Watch the interview here in this Web extra.

This is another recent video discussing the kind of people and management at the hospital.

One more Boston Hospital steps in to help with medical records that were slated to be destroyed. The moving and storage company pleaded with the State to take the records, but they told the owner they did not have the authority or space? A lot of help they were, so even the government agencies didn’t even care, so nice move on the part of the hospital, that had to go and get a court order to step in and help patients. Again, nice work on the part of the hospital, seeing the human side of helping other humans, something we seem to ultimately lack in so many areas of business and healthcare ethics today. BD

Emerson Hospital in Concord is coming to the rescue of hundreds of patients whose medical records were about to be destroyed, after their family physician abruptly closed his Acton practice and left the records in legal limbo.

A Lynn storage company - hired to clean out Dr. Ronald T. Moody's office after he was evicted in September - was scheduled to discard the records on April 8 and auction the remaining equipment. Moody, 62, who state regulators said had let his medical license lapse, ran a private practice. He was not affiliated with Emerson Hospital.

The idea of dumping hundreds of patients' files without them knowing about it had bothered Appleyard. Unable to find Moody, Appleyard contacted the state Board of Registration in Medicine and pleaded with the state to take the records. Board officials told Appleyard they didn't have the authority, budget, or storage space to take the files.