Running a Healthcare System

If some of the large hospital systems in New Jersey were managed like some of the large Wall Street firms, supersized commercial banks, and government agencies that contributed to derailing the economy, we’d all be in an even worse pickle.

This was brought vividly to mind up close and personal this week. When Priscille was admitted for surgery, I saw professional healthcare providers at work – all the way from a highly-trained surgical team, to nurses, to nutrition specialists, to personal care assistants, right down to the diligent people who sweep the floors and empty the waste baskets, etc., etc., and many others that I don’t even know about.

It may seem that there is no comparison between the operations of the U.S. financial system and the U.S. healthcare system, but there is a significant resemblance – not in what they do, but in how they do it. In the former, it seems that far too many people just didn’t give a damn.

And that’s all the difference in the world because, for over a week now, I’ve observed part of a healthcare system in Passaic County where people who take care of other people really do give a damn.

It’s not mere coincidence that St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson runs an efficiently tight ship. That hospital operates under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, a religious order.

Now, don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that a hospital has to be run by nuns to be efficient. But I’ll wager any day that if the boys running the U.S financial system and the people who abused it had operated under a code of conduct at par with a religious order of nuns, we wouldn’t have been listening to President Obama last night telling us how he proposes to pull us out of the economic mess this nation is in.

Thanks for checking in, and take care of yourselves. You deserve it.