How can hospitals help
Berwick praises Cincinnati Children’s as a long-time leader in many aspects of healthcare quality improvement. In fact, he has interacted with leaders here for many years, going back to 2002 when Cincinnati Children’s became one of 13 organizations to join the Pursuing Perfection initiative launched by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation.
That work ultimately led to the formation of the James M. Anderson Center for Health Systems Excellence at Cincinnati Children’s, which was built under the leadership of Uma Kotagal, MD, and now led by co-directors Peter Margolis, MD, PhD, and Steve Muething, MD.
Now, hospital leaders need to demonstrate even deeper commitments to improving population health, Berwick says. He recommends that hospitals pick one or more of the moral issues he advocates to focus upon as part of an overall broadening and re-thinking of their missions.
Hospitals can become much more active participants in issues such as reducing hunger, eliminating homelessness, or addressing the population-scale health problems worsened by America’s criminal justice system, Berwick says.
One of the first steps to achieving such goals: the health care “repair” system needs to stop constantly asking for more money, be it setting excessive drug prices or charging ever-higher fees for services.
“Health care confiscates much more than it needs,” Berwick says. “And that includes Cincinnati.”
The health care sector and the wider corporate business world share a mutual responsibility that goes beyond achieving short-term profits.
“What kind of society do you want?” Berwick asks. “And what’s your role in creating it?”
Recommended reading
Berwick says “The Health Gap,” written in 2015 by Michael Marmot, should be mandatory reading for people in health care.
The new Child Opportunity Index can be viewed in more detail here.
Coming up
Register now to hear Aviv Regev, PhD, Executive Vice President, Genentech Research and Early Development, who will speak at 2 pm July 29 about the topic “Design for Inference.”