Gary Passama

Gary Passama retired as president and CEO of NorthBay Healthcare on March 31, 2017. An active blogger since 2010, here’s a collection of his work.

Survivor

October 01, 2015
 

Last week I celebrated my 34th anniversary as NorthBay Healthcare’s CEO. I remembered because I received congratulations from many of my Linked-In connections.

Most felicitations were from connections I really did not know.  They were usually simple: “Congratulations.”

The messages I got from more intimate colleagues were more in the direction of: “Who knew you could last that long?” I took that as praise, but it easily could have meant they were surprised I outlived my first year. Truth be told, I was a little surprised after that first 12 months.

During my first year two new books were shaking up the thinking of managers. The first was “In Search of Excellence,” which was not only a best seller on the business lists but one that broke through to become a No. 1 best seller on the general non-fiction lists.

“In Search of Excellence” offered the theory that great companies all possess common characteristics. Among them was that they were close to their customers and made decisions with them in mind. I took that to heart. Talking with NorthBay’s (then known as Intercommunity) Board of Directors, I pushed the concept of being sensitive to patients and their needs. I immediately ran into opposition from a physician board member who felt the medical staff was the customer, not the patient.

Although he was a minority voice even within the medical staff when it came to the question of who was NorthBay’s customer, the discussion went on for several years. It was a fierce debate. But eventually our culture advanced to reflect the patient indeed was the center of our attention. I made it to Year 5 more or less intact. My family was grateful.

The second hot book that first year was by an author who was either way ahead of his time or just plain wrong. The title said it all: “Can Hospitals Survive?” This writer outlined all the changes occurring in health care and painted a very dismal picture of the future of hospitals in an environment which was becoming very competitive. Remember, this was in 1981.

Since then, books and articles with a similar theme appear regularly. Yet hospitals are still around. In fact, in most cases they remain the heart of the new integrated health care systems which have developed over the past 30 years, NorthBay included. Why is that?

Hospitals survive because when you are very sick you need the collective array of services available only in hospitals. Hospital organizations survive because they have integrated their services with those of physicians and others to begin the process of providing seamless care. There is much still to be done in that regard, but the direction is clear.

Just as important, good hospitals and their staffs stay patient-focused. That still counts in the search for excellence.

Hospitals remain a 24-hour beacon of hope for those who suddenly become very sick. Despite the many organizational models that attempt to place hospitals at the periphery of health care, they survive. They remain the heartbeat.

After 34 years, like me, hospitals are survivors. So as an unreconstructed hospital administrator, it feels good.

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