There are too many rogue CEOs out there: “Electricians are licensed. Accountants are licensed. Common sense dictates that someone running a hospital should be required to pass exams showing, not just that he or she knows something about “management and administration,” but that she has a solid grounding in what matters to patients””how to reduce errors and lift the quality of care.”
And here’s another reason why.
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- Health courts redux
- How some hospital CEOs deal with bad news
- Making money from providing inefficient, mediocre care
- Physician versus stock broker, redux
- Is the hospital July phenomenon a myth?
- Comparing hospital quality and cost in Massachusetts
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Right.
Because of course licensure will prevent people from being crooks or ‘rogues.’
A degree or certification instantly ensures we place individual interest above organizational integrity in all industries (law, medicine, nonprofit administration, etc.), including hospital administration.
Sure.
A degree, certification, or license doesn’t prevent someone from abusing the law. It raises the bar on barriers to entry, a point Drew makes at Our Own System here:
http://ourownsystem.com/2008/08/06/a-licensed-health-care-executive/.
But I’d argue many hospital executive teams (CEOs included) need courses on financial management, governance, community/staff relations, logistics/supply chain optimization, consumer-centric care planning/delivery, trends and innovation, and organizational behavior before they need to pass a pithy licensing exam that gives them a frameable certificate.
That’s the cynical view. Healthcare management licensure isn’t unheard of…There are models that work within subsectors of the healthcare administration industry, including long-term care. Many job ads for these facilities include a requirement for current state licensure.
It all essentially boils down to what we’re really talking about here – better management of hospitals in general (fiscal responsibility, ethical operations, etc.) or raising the quality of hospital executives via raising barriers to entry? Or are we talking about both?
We need to diagram the issue out and look at each component separately to take a stab at accurately assessing potential for improvement.
Also, of course, there’s the pesky implementation factor to be considered…exactly what US healthcare needs is another layer of administrative complexity (read: cost) thrown in the middle of the whole tangled web.
Licensure = certification bodies. Certification bodies = staff, paperwork, etc.
Going after the creation of state licensure requirements means lobbying, which means devoting a heck of a lot of money and time to speaking with our elected representatives to get bills on the ground.
I’m not a hospital executive, but it is a career path I’m considering. If licensure becomes a requirement, of course I’ll participate. However, it’s also one more incentive to get an MBA rather than a Master of Hospital Administration, or similar degree.
That being said, such an initiative could also be nurtured in these programs. Nursing students study for the NCLEX prior to graduation, and then sit for the boards. Master of Hospital Admin students could do the same for relevant licensure.
Even if we consider the long-term ROI rather than short-term, again I’d argue one of the central issues here is education rather than licensure.
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