Wednesday, December 14, 2011

What would this look like for academic medical centers?


A colleague in the arts sent along the following:

"An analysis of the mission statements of leading US art museums yields some surprising results," By András Szántó. From Art Basel Miami Beach daily edition; Published online: 01 December 2011.

The graphic above shows most frequently used words in 60 museum mission statements. The bigger the word, the more often it appears.

Quick. What do the following terms have in common? Beauty. Values. Discussion. Contemplation. The answer: none of them figures prominently among the institutional imperatives of US art museums—at least in light of their mission statements.

In fact, if you scanned 60 mission statements of prominent museums that exhibit contemporary art, you would find that each of the words above appears exactly once. Other words found missing from 59 of 60 mission statements: advocate, progressive, ambitious, ethical, intelligence, strategic, video.

If we were do the same for the nation's academic medical centers, what words would predominate?  Which would be missing?

Please provide your answers in the comments below.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 14, 2011 6:56 PM

    Ha! That's easy - 'world-class" would be the most frequent. I have choked on that one for years.

    I typed this comment a few minutes ago, and then decided to fact-check it. The second AMC I looked at (the first was BIDMC) confirmed my theory:

    http://www.massgeneral.org/about/overview.aspx

    nonlocal

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  2. Bruce RamshawDecember 14, 2011 9:59 PM

    Many are learning the words and including them in their mission statements: patient-centered, world class, team-based care, value, quality improvement, etc. etc. But unfortunately, other than individuals leading extraordinary efforts (like Peter Pronovost and others), the academic medical center leadership and overall organizational design continues to persist in an increasingly outdated mindset, and in an organizational hierarchy with vertical department silos that actually prevents implementation of the improvements described by the words in their mission statements.

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