by Tony Chen

I was having a great email conversation with a frequent hospital impact reader/commentor about some hospital topics that don't get enough press. In your opinion, what is the most important / least talked-about issue related to healthcare and hospital leadership?

Here's my list off the top of my head:
- preventive medicine - business case or not, we need to go here
- hospital organizational culture - what if hospitals were the best place to work (instead of being closer to the worst place to work)? (there are, of course, some great exceptions)
- Change management - most hospital leaders have never been trained at this, but have to do it every day
- hospital marketing - lots already been said, but I think we still have a long way to go. Why is it that when most hospitals talk about starting a new service, we always ask about "what does it do?" before we ask "what do our patients want?" The hospital revolves around the patient, not vice versa, right? Marketing isn't just newsletters and brochures and mailings, right? Isn't marketing pricing, distribution channels, packaging, and product.
- Product packaging - As one of the 4 "P"s of marketing, this is related to the last point. Innovation doesn't just come in new services, it comes in old services packaged in new ways.
- Hospital partnerships - usually taboo --> we can't partner with THEM - they're our competitors? How about we make a deal, you specialize and invest in cardio, and I'll do cancer...
- Sacred cows - you know these service lines well. We should blow them up, but yet they're still around, and will probably always be around. This is essentially an inevitable, indirect result of a lack of skills in thinking through change management and org culture.
- uninsured - this got A LOT of press last year, but it's as if people don't care anymore, and just want to talk about CDHPs and HSAs. still ~50 million folks...
- The miracles - still blows my mind why hospitals don't collaborate (or on their own) and share the most amazing stories of healing and new life that happen in our hospitals every day. Why aren't we telling these stories? Why aren't we letting our patients tell these stories for us? Besides the fact that hospitals are becoming public enemy #1, aren't these stories exactly what our hospitals are truly about?

What are the big ones for you? What important stories are we totally ignoring?