BIDMC & Paul Levy
Paul Levy arrived at BIDMC in 2002 with a singular vision and mandate: turn the ailing hospital coupled with sagging employee morale around, increase its numbers of patients, improve its services and pump it full of vigor. By all accounts, he succeeded at his mission. Beth Israel today is a stronger institution because of his efforts.
When he first arrived at BIDMC, Mr. Levy inaugurated a blog, “Running a Hospital,” in which he shared with the hospital employees and the community-at-large a commitment to “transparency” in all his dealings.
Mr. Levy still writes that blog today, although it is now called “Not Running a Hospital,” (http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/). A year after being fined $50,000 by the BIDMC board for admitting to an involvement with a female subordinate at the hospital, he was asked to resign. The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office investigated the allegations against Mr. Levy over a four month period the year before. They found no serious wrong doing. Nonetheless, the AG concluded that his relationship with the unnamed female employee he brought onto the staff “clearly endangered the reputation of the institution and its management,” and urged the hospital to do “some soul searching” with regards to retaining him.
A tall, amiable man with a shock of white hair and a salt and pepper beard, Levy — his career at the hospital compromised and after publicly issuing an apology, in his blog, for unnamed “mistakes” — maintains that the controversy over his alleged indiscretions with a female subordinate was unrelated to his imposed departure. “That was over. That was almost a year ago,” he told the Boston Globe. He insisted, “The board had given me a vote of confidence.” His view: when he turned 60 years old recently, during a vacation in Africa, he reflected on his career and determined, now that BIDMC had had “the best year ever,” fiscally speaking, it was time to move on.
Caritas Christi & Dr. Ralph de la Torre
Ralph de la Torre is a cardiologist turned hospital CEO. He has been credited with attracting a New York-based private equity firm, Cerberus, to invest almost $900 million into a group of struggling Massachusetts community hospitals, Caritas Christi, founded by nuns who had pledged to help the poor access needed healthcare.
In a speech that is now posted on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HOLJN20uSg), he told his staff: “Cerberus has agreed to honor our past and more.” He went on to assure the staff that he believed in them, believed in their work, and that important improvements to programs as well as needed repairs to the facilities would commence “immediately.”
Like Mr. Levy, Dr. de la Torre is a man with drive, verve and vision, who has worked his way up through the ranks. This journey required him to learn diplomacy, to bring disparate groups like the Boston Archdiocese and the Service Employee International Union to the table to work together. His work has not gone unnoticed by those in high places. President Obama, during a campaign swing through Boston last fall, stopped at Dr. De la Torre’s home for a fundraiser. There have been numerous speculations that the Obama administration will recruit him to join their healthcare reform team.
On many levels, it is not fair to compare the two men: they are, after all, two distinct individuals who must be evaluated on their sum of their own merits, accomplishments and failures. Yet, because they are from the same Boston community, comparisons are fair game. And their impact — the repercussions of their work — will be felt for some time to come.
Robert Israel is a Boston-based healthcare informatics and content management consultant. He can be reached at risrael_97@yahoo.com, or by visiting www.bobisrael.com.
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