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Morristown Medical Center

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All hail peer-to-peer learning for physicians

 

The Physician Leadership Journal article linked here caught our eye, in part because Cambridge Management Group used some similar peer-to-peer learning techniques a few years ago to revive and redirect cardiologists’ interest in the heart hospital that Atlantic Health System was building.

It’s heartening to see that the market is assigning more value these days to developing the sort of clinician-leadership-building and clinician team-building  that Cambridge Management Group has been doing for 30 years.

The article,  “Learning by Doing: Developing Physician Leaders Through Action,” shares insights from Atlantic Health System’s (AHS) partnership with The Leadership Development Group (TLD Group) to customize its Applied Physician Leadership Academy© (APLA™) to build AHS’s physician leaders for growth and innovation through strategic action learning.

From a Leadership Development Group press release on the project. (We have paraphrased some of it.):

“{T}action learning projects were one part of a full leadership academy that included a series of interactive learning modules delivered by nationally recognized physician leaders and academicians as well as individual leadership assessment and coaching all customized to meet the needs of physician leadership development for AHS.  All components of TLD Group’s APLA work in tandem to foster leadership growth.”

”’Through our work with TLD Group we saw first-hand how action learning is an impactful process to improve physician engagement and leadership effectiveness and build leadership competencies, while working toward tangible business results,” said Lynn DiGuiseppe Turner,  Atlantic Health Systems’s human-resources director.

“‘Conversations based on effective listening were a hallmark of the overall program.  It created a new sense of ‘we’ and enabled physician leaders to believe they could facilitate cultural change,”‘ added Gregory Mulford, M.D., medical director of Atlantic Rehabilitation Services for Atlantic Health System and chairman of the Department of Rehabilitation at Morristown Medical Center.

“We are thrilled to share our work with AHS through our customized Applied Physician Leadership Academy,” said Tracy Duberman, president and CEO of TLD Group.  “The implementation of this program led to system-wide solutions to strategic problems that have driven stronger administration/physician leader alignment and clinical integration.”

 

 

 

 


N.J. case scares hospitals classified as nonprofit

morristown

Morristown Medical Center.Atlantic Health System, which owns Morristown Medical Center, in New Jersey, will pay $26 million to that town to end a dispute over the hospital’s property-tax exemption. The case has gotten wide attention because it raises the general issue of what really constitutes a nonprofit when the organizations involved may have big cash reserves and pay big executive compensation. Indeed there’s  been intensified scrutiny of “not-for-profit” hospitals  and insurers such as Blue Cross across America in the past several years.
Modern Healthcare reported that the settlement comes after “a New Jersey tax judge ruled in June that the hospital should not be exempt, concluding that if all hospitals operate the same way, ‘then for purposes of the property-tax exemption, modern nonprofit hospitals are essentially legal fictions.”’

The publication says that “Experts say the fight in New Jersey is likely to move now to the state’s Legislature, where hospitals are expected seek concrete criteria for determining tax exemptions so they don’t find themselves in the same situation as Morristown Medical Center. ”

“Morristown Medical Center will pay the town $15.5 million, including $5.5 million in penalties and interest over the next 10 years. Also, starting next year, the medical center will start paying about $1 million in annual taxes on 24% of its property, for the next 10 years.”

The judge in the case, Vito Bianco,  had noted  the hospital’s  relationships with for-profit subsidiaries and that it owns for-profit physician practices. He said he found it difficult to distinguish Atlantic Health System’s “not-for-profit” activities from  its for-profit ones. The judge also pointed out that the hospital has paid its executives huge  salaries, including $5 million to its CEO in 2005.


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