The senior leadership is full of sycophants. Continuous back-stabbing and lying for their own advantages, at the detriment of the organization as a whole; especially the employees. The amount of financial waste that goes on daily is sickening and a case study in why health care cost are so incredibly high. I have personally seen millions spent on projects to literally have them immediately abandoned after they where completed. (Specifically IT systems) There is zero accountability for this waste and unfortunately the executives continue to give their stamp of approval on this type of activity as they reward those in control of these bad behaviors. The pure lack of profit and loss responsibilities/accountabilities is completely insane. There is a continued focus on how to squeeze more money out of state and federal reimbursements and how to create new lines of business, chasing pots of gold at the end of random rainbows, rather then focusing on how to make existing areas efficient and profitable. Children's is leading the way in terms of it's cost of services, it is among the highest in the nation.
A lot of the issues are directly related to the a love hate relationship between the Doctors and the organization. The Doctors love to hate everything the hospital does and the hospital loves to cater to their every whim. If you have a facility that is open and staffed 40 hours a week and the doctors choose to only see patients 15-20 of those hours, well you can see the problem there. The executive leadership is so afraid of the Medical Staff and the relationship with UT Southwest that they will not do anything about it. Again, common sense says that you don't staff for the 40 hours of you find doctors that will work a full week seeing patients. The arrogance and god complex that 95% of these doctors have is ridiculous and has been left unchecked for far too long.
The business model of Healthcare is a broken and one could not expect Children's to not fall into some of the same traps that it's peers do. However, the continued directed this organization is going is only going to lead to it's ultimate demise; maybe this will be a good thing. It is a 100 year old organization and continues to run it's business like a 100 year old organization; old, slow, and inefficient. There are so many senior leaders that want to be like the perceived peer hospitals, but no one wants to do the hard work to get there. They want to spend their way to the top.
Bad behavior amongst the leadership is so common it almost appears it is taught at some level. There are leaders that continue to degrade, demoralize, and denigrate the employees day in and day out. When brought to HR's attention or even to simply their peers, it is overlooked or explained away in some manner. Employee engagement scores continue to indicate that the employees and senior leadership are not on the same page with the happiness and well being of it's employees. Most groups are short staffed and long hours are demanded from all. The idea is work life balance does not exist. There is often expectation that work continues well into the night each day after normal business hours are over. I do not shy away from hard work for the sake of getting to goal on a project or effort. However, the expectation is that you pull these types of hours 365 days out of year simply because. Everyone needs a good understanding of working smarter and not harder. Sadly enough, staying late and working weekends is talked about by everyone as some sort of badge of honor.
The senior leadership operates as some sort of oligarchical dystopia society. The rich get richer and the peasant employees must do as their kinds tell them. There are no open doors to senior leaders. If you interact with them, do so only if you have first been spoken to. Then act as if they are better then everyone under them. It is truly sad to see that both the CEO and the Board allow this type of activity to not only be allowed but encouraged.
