By Roger Longenderfer, M.D., Retired CEO of Pinnacle Health System and Executive Board Member, Pride Philanthropy
I’m often asked to discuss ways to get physicians to participate in fundraising activities at their organization. My answer usually starts with a story about how healthcare and the hospital environment has changed during my career to illustrate a point.
In the Fall of 1982, I was a new family doctor in a small town in Pennsylvania. Every morning I made rounds at the local hospital starting with coffee in the doctor’s lounge. In the lounge I met and talked with the medical staff elders, the surgeons specialists and usually the hospital CEO. We talked about patient care, quality, politics, insurance companies and the hospital’s plans for the future. It was clear we all shared a common bond of sorts. We argued, debated plans, and complained to the administration, but we recognized the hospital was important to the community, our patients, and us. The hospital was a community in itself.
In the Fall of 2010, I was a CEO of a multi-hospital system. My mornings often started with a visit to the doctor’s lounge to hobnob with physicians. I became used to the fact there were no family doctors and few internists (they were all in their offices). The surgeons were mostly running to the hospital’s operating rooms (or often to their own operating rooms at the Surgicenter). Specialists of all sorts were doing much the same or returning emails or text messages. There was little time to talk, let alone discuss hospital plans, patient care, quality, or politics. It didn’t feel like a community or a system of care. It felt more like a commuter station. We were merely passing through the same space. Occasionally there was a momentary face-to-face discussion. There was always the hope that the next quarterly medical staff meeting would be beneficial, but few doctors attended. I would think that possibly the medical staff newsletter could fill a void, but the reality was few doctors if any read it. The “system” seemed to push us apart. The hospital’s importance as a focus of healthcare delivery had changed from a mutually beneficial community to a theoretical construct.
What that change has meant to our philanthropic endeavors with physicians, and what we might do to respond follows in future blogs.
