Achieving Success through Community Leadership
By Peter A. Weil, Richard J. Bogue, and Reed L. Morton
Health Administration Press, Chicago
2001, 104 pp., $35
REVIEWED BY CAROL SALZMANN, RN
Mission—the reason that an organization exists—is fundamental to its existence.
Board members know this. CEOs know this. Senior leadership knows this. But do
these leaders truly believe and practice their hospitals' stated
missions? Authors Weil, Bogue, and Morton emphasize from the start the importance
of community health as a "driver" for a hospital's mission statement. Achieving
Success through Community Leadership is about helping hospitals learn through
"best practices" how to relate to their communities and ultimately how to improve
community health.
I was delighted to recognize a name amongst the acknowledgments on page xi:
Jane Oehm of Golden, CO. I appreciated the authors' inclusion of community members
on their panel. Jane is a former member of my organization's board, and it was
a pleasure working with her.
Achieving Success through Community Leadership is designed to reset
priorities for financially focused health care leaders and reintroduce them
to the importance of community leadership. The book's introduction describes
the volatile history of health care over the past two decades and puts into
perspective hospitals' current focus on the bottom line. The authors include
seven strategies for linking performance expectations to community health improvement.
They dedicate a chapter to each strategy, from visioning to process. Twenty-five
"leading practices" are aligned with these strategies.
The book's conceptual framework and content are pertinent to health care's
current environment. In their introduction, the authors describe the multifaceted
approach they used to identify "leading sites," hospitals that responded to
their call for data. They then define and describe what they call "leading practices,"
and do so in a manner that makes them easily adaptable by other hospitals and
health care systems. The authors also describe lessons learned from six "demonstration
site" hospitals. The leading practices, they say, are intended to have an impact
on the management and governance of hospitals or health systems; they are not
meant to be community health initiatives.
The authors of Achieving Success through Community Leadership follow
a consistent format as they proceed, chapter by chapter, to highlight each strategy.
In discussing a particular strategy, they sometimes give examples from both
the leading sites and the demonstration sites involved. Scattered through the
book are concrete examples of curricula, surveys, and self-assessment tools
that have been developed and implemented by the "leading sites." Chapter 1,
"Visioning a Healthy Community," sets the stage for learning. Here, the authors
elaborate on the ways that hospitals are "discovering new synergies and making
better strategic decisions by embedding population and community health goals
in the performance management system" (p. 1).
In Chapters 2, 3, and 4 the authors encourage leaders to invest in community
health, invest in education, and make personnel decisions that foster community
health. In their remaining chapters, they focus on marketing activities, structural
changes, and developing processes that promote community health. Their goal
is to change hospital leaders' behaviors so that they can develop a culture
in which "community health is as important as financial performance" (p. 90).
I was intrigued by the diversity of hospital and public health relationships
highlighted in the book's appendix, entitled "The Role of Public Health" (p.
97). Both hospitals and local health departments will continue to face challenges.
Collaboration seems imperative; I was happy to see that the authors noted some
"leading practices" involving strong hospital and public health partnerships.
Weil, Bogue, and Morton have collaborated to publish a book with real application
to hospitals and health care systems. They suggest that health care leaders
should decide on a strategy (or group of strategies) that seems most appropriate
for their organizations and then act on it. The authors conclude, and I concur,
that it is possible for creative, mission-driven leaders to improve community
health and regain the trust of the public and dedicated staff and physicians.
Carol Salzmann, RN
Director, Community Development
Exempla Lutheran Medical Center
Wheat Ridge, CO