Maybe This Lady Gets It

Julie Salamon is a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.  She had the opportunity to spend a year up front and personal in Maimonedes Hospital, a 705 bed, 100 year old teaching hospital in the wilds of Brooklyn, NY. I worked at another, similar hospital a few miles down the road. The result of her efforts is a book, “Hospital: Men, Women, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids”. The book is planned for release this coming Thursday, May 15. (Anyone get the "Ben Casey" reference?)

Salamon was interviewed for the Kaiser Network which you can view here. My impression is that she may “get” what it’s like to work in an urban teaching hospital. She talked about the incredible stress, how hospital staff end up treating each other badly, but how, deep down, they really care about patients, about the work they do and doing it well. I could relate to what she was saying from my experience as an assistant administrator at Brookdale Hospital, a 1,000 bed teaching hospital also in Brooklyn. From our ER (105,000 visits in my day, plus 250,000 in a walk in clinic) to the various inpatient units, Brookdale was an interesting window on the world. I wondered whether she ever read “House of God”.

There are so many people from outside of healthcare who think they know what it's like, and how to solve our problems. For example, Newt Gringrich is now a health care expert - can you believe that?  So are Harvard management professors Michael Porter and Regina Herzlinger. Rather than coming at it from a high level, the way she tells her story it sounds like Salamon actuallry spent time around real patients.

It’s a short interview to watch, and I look forward to the book next week.