A Hospital Chief's Auld Lang Syne for 2013

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Cheryl Clark, for HealthLeaders Media, December 27, 2012

CHORUS
We'll top our quality scores this year and be acute care heroes
We'll learn from all our past mistakes, and shave our "wouldn't recommends" to zeros.

We turned away the merger op, and failed the acquisition.
And now our board of directors doubts our CEO has mission.

Our alignment is in disarray, we have no hard stop policies.
We've failed to reduce our lengths of stay or unnecessary surgeries.

CHORUS
We'll fix our quality scores this year and be acute care heroes
We'll learn from all our past mistakes, and trim our waste to zeros.

We thought no one cared about call lights, or looked at Hospital Compare,
But now to get value incentive pay, we really don't have a prayer.

I guess we forgot our cost efficiency would be out for all to see
Or that our imaging and mortality rates are part of transparency!

CHORUS
We'll move our quality scores this year and be acute care heroes
We'll learn from all our past mistakes, and drop our outliers to zero.

When employees slipped, we fired them for making a stupid error.
Who knew hospitals were supposed to have a soul of "blame-free culture"?

We didn't go for an ACO; didn't think it fiscally sound.
But now our docs are defecting, admitting patients all over town.