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Patricia Cloonan, RN, PhD, the co-director of the Healthcare Leadership Institute and associate professor of health systems administration at Georgetown, told us that we were going to be presented with thought provoking material during the week that would bring up many questions – but not necessarily give us the answers. It was up to us to delve into the facts and find our own answers to these intriguing topics based on what we were learning from the wonderful lineup of educators that Georgetown had assembled. Maintaining professional excellence is one of the most important challenges we face as healthcare managers as we deal with increasing pressures of government regulation, competition, and restrained finances.

I’ve highlighted just a few of the directives we were exposed to that week. All sessions were designed to build skills in confronting ethical issues, government scrutiny, communication, and how to promote transparency in care quality, and costs in your healthcare facility. With the advent of almost daily news stories on adverse events, numerous comparison and information disclosure websites, how do we hone our business-oriented methodologies and properly balance them with the emotional issues involved in patient care?

2008 Georgetown Healthcare Leadership Program graduating class

We were challenged to work as team members as well as team directors so we would experience both viewpoints in problem solving – and in one case, the problem was how to catch a raw egg dropped from 6 feet up in an architecturally rendered and built (by us) gizmo, made of 20 plastic straws and masking tape. We also had exercises in employee–employer negotiations that reminded us all that our expectations are just that – ours and not necessarily "theirs". And perhaps one of the largest personal challenges of the week – was just that – leaving a busy job and spending an entire week in a comprehensive program like this.

The program began with a session on character-based leadership that introduced Cloonan’s challenge for our week by focusing on personal growth and skill enhancement. The class was taught by Norman R. Augustine, whose distinguished career has included working in the office of the Secretary of Defense, serving as former CEO of Lockheed Martin, a member of the Board of Trustees at Princeton University and MIT, and chairman of the American Red Cross. He posed the question of ethical dealings and how often we may be put in a situation where we don’t immediately realize that we are dealing with an ethical issue. His fictional example asked the question - what would we do if we lived in a town with only one fire truck, and we’re told that the school and the long term care facility are both on fire – do we save the kids or go for the elderly patients? And the right answer was...

We then explored community benefit and the issues involved in fulfilling care levels with our hospital services. Roseanne Pajka, senior vice president, Holy Cross Hospital, Silver Springs, MD, posed some good questions for the class about hospital tax-exempt status and community benefit. They included: What are your organization’s current community benefit activities? How do you take an inventory of services that fully appreciates the organization’s current level of commitment and understanding of community benefit? In this current environment of increased transparency and reporting, will the IRS and your community judge that your hospital is doing enough? Most important are you meeting those expectations and do your perceptions of your extra services match that of the community and meet their needs? Pajka went on to explain that hospital leaders often don’t understand the need to discuss their programs with the community leaders to ensure that the hospital programs offered meet the current needs of the populace in their area.

Classroom at the historic Car Barn, Georgetown University

Later in the week participants spent a morning on Capitol Hill, being briefed by key legislative staffers on current health policy issues. We had the opportunity to meet and listen to several House and Senate members that are currently involved in healthcare legislation and policy making bills and were introduced as rising stars in healthcare policy. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) has made healthcare reform the subject of the first three pieces of legislation he introduced since taking office, encouraging health quality reforms, health IT infrastructure and linking payments to quality. He emphasized that reform of the healthcare delivery system is as important as healthcare finance reform.

Congresswoman Allison Schwartz (PA) was the bill sponsor for e-prescribing as well as championing the expansion of federal SCHIP program to cover all eligible children. Congressman Xavier Becerra (CA) spoke of his constitutency and the need to improve the Social Security program for women and minorities and to strengthen Medicare and ensure its long-term viability.
All three were passionate about the need for healthcare reform measures and emphasized several times how they want to hear from us (healthcare professionals) with our questions and concerns so they are aware of ‘our’ problems that may change how and where they look for solutions.

Georgetown University certificates were awarded at our last evening banquet, and we were delighted to find out that we had earned 22.5 CE Contact hours in addition to all the wonderful experiences we had.