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Hospital Impact has been ranked one of the top 50 healthcare blogs by Wikio.
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I recently attended something called the Landmark Forum, three days of self-introspection.
The net-net: Things in life happen. We then create a story around it. The story then defines our reality. And it limits our possibilities.
See, we all show up at work with baggage. We have stories of why things are the way they are and they affect all aspects of human relationships.
In his Marketing Profs article, Howard Lax, Ph.D., says the memory of an experience trumps the actual experience.
Context, he says, defines the parameters of our thinking and sets our expectations. That is why it is so hard to break out of context and why only a handful of visionaries can break through the boundaries and imagine and build things never before envisioned.
I was attending the World Health Care Congress outside of Washington, D.C., earlier this month when the trade journals reported, and my local Charlotte news exploded with, the CaroMont Health "Cheat Death" debacle.
Hospital officials hoped the unveiling of a new tagline with a provocative phrase would resonate with residents, spurring them to eat better and exercise more, and thereby embracing wellness and living longer lives.
Let's see, you're trying to promote health and life. Seems the previous tagline fit just fine: "In Love with Life."
Well, the community went crazy and CaroMonth's new tagline is going away.
It looks like hospital marketers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing that doesn't always work. They are trying too hard, spending too much, and frankly, they are confused.
BMJ Quality and Safety released a paper in March that suggests a direct correlation between staff satisfaction and quality care. It seemed to indicate better performing hospitals make for happier workers.
So I was wondering if the opposite is true. Do happy workers make for better performing hospitals?
Let's look to Harvard professor Shawn Achor, author of "Happiness Advantage," who is turning into the "happiness guru." He maintains happiness remains elusive in a goal-obsessed society. Just as you achieve one thing that you think will make you happy, you only set the bar higher.
Sound familiar? Yet a consensus is emerging that happy brains improve business, education and health outcomes.
This illustration from the company Root does a good job in summing up today's healthcare environment. Notice the people in the raft--those are patients struggling to hang on in the turbulent tides of healthcare.
I once went rafting in Alaska and the preamble to the trip was filled with all of the what-if scenarios that could happen, like if you capsize. My mother-in-law was terrified and didn't want to be there.
You see, with bundled payments, value-based purchasing, readmission penalties and more, outside forces are saying "move care outside the hospital; we don't want patients there." The same forces in long-term care are moving services to the home with aging in place. And like my mother-in-law in the raft, people are terrified to become patients.
During the holidays, I had the pleasure of seeing the play "Avenue Q" in an off-Broadway production in New York. I had to chuckle.
As children, the characters were assured by their parents and by children's television programs that they were "special" and "could do anything." But as adults, they have discovered that in the real world their options are limited, and they are no more "special" than anyone else.
Ironically, the characters spend a good portion of their time ruminating about their "purpose." By now you know how much harping I do about understanding your passion and purpose. This play made me think that perhaps passion and purpose will always be works in progress.
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