Paul Levy is President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School) and he writes the popular Running a Hospital blog. Recognizing that hospitals have many constituents (patients and their families, doctors and staff, and the communities they serve), Levy uses his blog as an important communications and management tool. Among many other things, Levy posts about clinical data that the hospital sees in virtually real time—things like quality and safety. Running a Hospital has about 10,000 visitors per week.
"As an academic medical center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is a high cost part of the medical system," Levy says. "The public has the right to know what they are getting for their money. So what better way to make a case that we're adding value to our public, and to the government agencies that support and regulate us? Why not show what we’re doing as a public institution through the blog? This is an exceptionally useful tool as part of the public debate and to hold our own people accountable."
Levy says the blog makes it easier for doctors and employees at the hospital to work together. For example he posted information gathered at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center about Ventilator Associate Pneumonia that helped to save more than 90 lives. "People in hospitals are caring and they want to eradicate disease. The blog creates better work because we are not afraid to say what we're doing and how we’re helping. We put ourselves under the microscope."
