As patients, we see medical professionals making critical decisions as they help people and support staff assisting them. While the hospital board or administration can’t dictate a doctor’s medical decisions or override a nurse’s training when it comes to the care of their patients, it does control the environment in which those decisions are considered and made.

In the United States, hospitals are businesses that provide urgent and critical healthcare services to a community. They might be run by core values of compassion, but they are ruled by the realities of innumerable bottom lines.

In this episode, Anne and Kay consider the question: How does a hospital sustain the compassion of healthcare while accounting for the costs of doing its business? Does a healthcare organization work as a corporate culture of a profit-focused business or do they have a culture of patient safety first? What does a “Just Culture” look like in a hospital, and what does it take to sustain it?

Anne Roberts and Kay continue their conversation about how American hospitals operate from an administrator’s perspective. Anne is a Vice President of Hospital Operations at Mount Sinai Health Systems in New York. She also works as an attorney with Van Wey & Metzler specializing in medical malpractice cases. Patient safety has been the key focus of Anne’s career. Her three decades of insider knowledge and passion for advocacy makes her a frequent guest on AdvoKAYte.

Today, Kay and Anne discuss: