By Robin Strongin.
Paul F. Levy, Disruptive Women’s June 2010 Man of the Month, was appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in January 2002. BIDMC is one of the nation’s preeminent academic health centers, providing state-of-the-art clinical care, research, and teaching in affiliation with Harvard Medical School. Previously, Mr. Levy was the Executive Dean for Administration at Harvard Medical School, where he was responsible for administrative, budgetary, and facility issues, as well as community and governmental relations. He was also involved in coordinating collaborative ventures between HMS and its affiliated hospitals. Before joining Harvard Medical School, Paul Levy was Adjunct Professor of Environmental Policy at MIT, where he taught infrastructure planning and development and environmental policy for seven years. Mr. Levy has served as Executive Director of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, Chairman of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and Director of the Arkansas Department of Energy.
Ever since I created the Disruptive Women in Health Care blog, I wanted to meet Paul Levy. Who was this guy who boldly started blogging when most executives in health care either didn’t know what blogging was or were frightened by legal into thinking that blog was a 4-letter word? His blog, Running a Hospital, is “a blog started by a CEO of a large Boston hospital to share thoughts about hospitals, medicine, and health care issues.”
I recently spoke with Paul and the first thing I asked him was Why Blog? Here’s what he had to say:
Why did you decide to blog? Was there one incident that propelled you, an aha moment, or had you been thinking about it for a while? Paul simply said, “It was a lark.” He explained that in August ’06 he was reading a New York Times article about how executives don’t blog. “Being a contrarian, I started blogging. It was an excuse to learn.” Paul mentioned that the Boston Globe took notice, wrote about his blogging and then it was “off to the races.” He added that he’s obsessed by blogging…in a good way. “It helps consolidate my thinking.”
As you reflect back over your years of blogging, what have you learned? “I hadn’t realized the power of blogging until I actually did it.” He gave me an example: One of his top priorities at BIDMC is a major emphasis on quality and safety, eliminating preventable harm. Paul experimented by using his blog to publish infection rates and clinical outcomes. “I didn’t worry or think about how unusual it was—I just did it.” [Pretty disruptive of him—I knew I liked this guy]. He discovered that the blog served as “an incredibly powerful, transformative management tool.” The blog became the vehicle that allowed everyone in the organization to see the data, to see how they were doing. An audacious goal was established, and the blog enabled everyone in the hospital to track progress. According to Paul, publishing the data on his blog helped foster the desire to meet the goal. “The approach was well received and appreciated. And, it created no legal problems.”
Since last week’s Health 2.0 conference in Washington DC was fresh in my mind I asked Paul, What do you think of the blossoming Health 2.0 phenomena…what is it’s promise and what work needs to be done? He once again stressed that the value of Health 2.0, and social media in general, lies in the ability of these tools to provide a way for people to share and exchange data, information and ideas. “They support a community of interest.”
We talked for some time about how unfortunate it was that health care companies, particularly those in the life sciences, fear they will be criticized—or worse, if they take the social media plunge. We also agreed that the real power of these tools reside in patient advocacy—enabling people to actively participate in their own health.
I have to ask—health reform—as a veteran of the Massachusetts experience, what do you think about where we are and where we are headed? “Massachusetts is prologue for the country as a whole. We certainly had a head start with reform, likewise with the cost implications. We are working through all that.” Paul stressed to me that the costs were under-estimated in the law and the delivery system is still a mess. He doesn’t see the government fixing that. “We won’t improve the delivery system by government fiat; it has to come from the profession.”
Any words of wisdom to share as we conclude our conversation? “Please, be disruptive… disruption and imagination are the driving forces for change.”