Pulse: Cleveland Clinic Receives $10M Gift to Establish First-of-Its-Kind Samson Global Leadership Academy for Healthcare Executives

 

Pulse

Cleveland Clinic Receives $10M Gift to Establish First-of-Its-Kind Samson Global Leadership Academy for Healthcare Executives

Cleveland Clinic has received a $10 million gift to launch a unique and comprehensive executive education program that will provide opportunities for emerging leaders from all fields to learn from experienced peers.

The Samson Global Leadership Academy for Healthcare Executives was made possible by a generous gift from grateful patients Eric and Sheila Samson of South Africa. Mr. Samson, a steel executive, and his wife hope to encourage others to give philanthropically.

“While at the Cleveland Clinic, we had a great care experience and were treated like family, which gave us great comfort,” said Mr. Samson. “We hope our gift will encourage others to give and advance important programs that can make a difference and help develop our future leaders.”
Ten years ago, Mr. Samson came to Cleveland Clinic for heart surgery, which was performed by Delos “Toby” Cosgrove, M.D., president and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic. Since then, they have remained close friends.

The new program, scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of 2011, will incorporate classroom study, mentoring and extensive, hands-on experience tailored to give a broad-based learning in leadership. It will allow up-and-coming executives to experience real-life opportunities as they work side-by-side with business executives at the Clinic.

Dr. Cosgrove said donations like the Samsons’ gift allow the hospital to continue to develop innovative programs in support of its mission: excellence in patient care, medical education, and research.

“We are incredibly grateful for the Samsons’ generous gift that will advance Cleveland Clinic’s commitment to innovation in medical education and to develop future healthcare leaders,” Dr. Cosgrove said. “The Samson Academy is a unique opportunity to share our expertise and leadership model that we have built during our more than 85-year history.”

Building on the history of the Clinic’s innovation opportunities, this new academy will position leaders to dive into the challenges of leadership, management and growth, both domestically and globally.

“The Samson Academy will focus on preparing business leaders to handle the challenges of running large organizations,” said James Stoller, M.D., Chairman of Cleveland Clinic’s Education Institute. “Cleveland Clinic has developed a unique business model focused on quality, efficiency and cost control. Our leaders will share lessons, strategies and management techniques that can translate to other organizations and industries beyond healthcare.”

The Samson Academy builds from the success of the Cleveland Clinic Academy, which provided leadership and management instruction to more than 650 medical leaders in 2009. The academy is in its seventh year, and has provided valuable insight into the necessary business programs that are most beneficial to executives.

Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science Will Advance New, Interdisciplinary Field of Study

Dartmouth College has received a $35 million commitment to establish The Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, President Jim Yong Kim announced in May. The anonymous gift will advance a new field of study, harnessing the knowledge and expertise of faculty across multiple disciplines from the arts and sciences as well as from the medical, business, and engineering schools.

Kim said the gift will speed Dartmouth’s work on the next stage of needed healthcare reform: “The passage of health reform was a historic event that will result in millions of Americans having access to our healthcare system. Health Care Delivery Science is about ensuring that the care they receive is the best it can be.”

“We know—and this has been documented by the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care—that there are glaring variations in how medical resources are used in the U.S. More care and more expensive care do not guarantee high quality care,” Kim said. “What we need is a new field that brings the best minds—from management, systems engineering, anthropology, sociology, the medical humanities, environmental science, economics, health services research, and medicine—to focus on how we deliver the best quality care, in the best way, to patients nationally and globally. Those people are here at Dartmouth.”

In addition to integrating across the Arts and Sciences (undergraduate and graduate), the Tuck School of Business, the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth Medical School, and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Health Care Delivery Science creates a unique partnership between the College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock, its affiliated academic health system. Dartmouth-Hitchcock will provide the base for innovation and implementation in clinical practice, said Co-Presidents James N. Weinstein and Nancy Formella.

“In the past decade, Dartmouth-Hitchcock has created a number of innovative models in clinical care, including the Spine Center, the first-in-the-nation Center for Shared Decision-Making, and the Comprehensive Breast Program,” Weinstein said. “This is a fantastic opportunity to build new partnerships within the College, and take advantage of President Kim’s experience in tackling the challenge of healthcare delivery in some of the most difficult settings in the world.”

One of the first initiatives will be a new Masters program in Health Care Delivery Science, offered jointly by The Dartmouth Institute and the Tuck School of Business. Traditional healthcare management courses have been built around general “best business” practices from a wide range of professions. The Dartmouth curriculum will be unique in its singular focus on discovery and analysis of innovations and real-time implementation in healthcare. Executive education and distance learning will be incorporated into the new degree program, scheduled to enroll its first class in July 2011. Undergraduate offerings in this field will be developed as well, Kim said.
For more information about the Dartmouth Center for Health Care Delivery Science, please visit http://tdc.dartmouth.edu.

Joint Commission Publishes New Guide for Advancing Patient-Centered Care
Included are Recommendations to Comply with New Standards

A free monograph released by The Joint Commission, entitled “Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient-and Family-Centered Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals,” provides recommendations to inspire hospitals to address unique patient needs and comply with new standards for patient-centered communication.

In August 2008, The Joint Commission, with funding from The Commonwealth Fund, began an initiative to advance the issues of effective communication, cultural competence, and patient- and family-centered care in hospitals. The project was directed by Paul Schyve, M.D., senior vice president, The Joint Commission, and Amy Wilson-Stronks, M.P.P., project director, Division of Quality Measurement and Research, and principal investigator for The Joint Commission study, Hospitals, Language, and Culture. The focus of the project was to develop accreditation standards for the hospital program and a monograph to help hospitals better meet patient needs. The Joint Commission collaborated with the National Health Law Program to develop the Roadmap for Hospitals.

“We want to inspire hospitals to integrate effective communication, cultural competence, and patient- and family-centered care into their organizations,” says Dr. Schyve. “By giving hospitals this Roadmap, we are providing them with the methods to begin or improve upon their efforts to ensure that all patients receive the same high quality care.”

Effective communication, cultural competence, and patient-and family-centered care are not stand-alone initiatives. A hospital must embed these practices in the core activities of its system of care delivery to truly meet the needs of the patients, families, and communities served. The recommendations in the Roadmap for Hospitals do not encompass every aspect of these three areas, but represent key issues that hospitals should consider to meet the unique needs of each patient. Practice examples and recommendations address various issues including race, ethnicity, language, culture, health literacy, other communication barriers, mobility needs, and the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender patients. The Joint Commission encourages hospitals to adopt a combination of the practices discussed and to use these examples as a foundation for creating processes, policies, and programs that are best suited for their organizations.

Many of the recommendations included in the Roadmap for Hospitals originated during the development of The Joint Commission’s new patient-centered communication standards. The patient-centered communication standards were approved in December 2009 and released to the field in January 2010. The standards will be published in the 2011 hospital accreditation manual. Joint Commission surveyors will evaluate compliance with the patient-centered communication standards beginning January 1, 2011; however, findings will not affect the accreditation decision at that time. The information collected by Joint Commission surveyors and staff during this pilot implementation phase will be used to prepare the field for full implementation by answering common implementation questions and concerns. Inclusion of the patient-centered communication standards in the accreditation decision is targeted for January 2012. The Roadmap for Hospitals includes example practices and “how to” information to help hospitals comply with the new standards.

To access the complete text of the Roadmap for Hospitals, visit The Joint Commission Web site at www.jointcommission.org. For more information about the Roadmap for Hospitals, contact Christina Cordero, Ph.D., M.P.H., at ccordero@jointcommission.org or 630.792.5845.