Hospitals need flexibility to find best ways to provide community benefits

Regarding the Dec. 3 “Margin vs. Mission” cover story (“Flaws in reporting create knowledge vacuum regarding community benefits”), at this point I don’t think the evidence is strongly in favor of any particular type of “community benefit” activity having the greatest actual benefit or even bang for the buck.

If the various hospitals have the power to get credit for trying different activities, we as a society benefit by having data to tell us what is working under different conditions. The article seemed to argue that because the different hospitals used different tactics and some of those didn’t work as well as others, the program should be tightened up, essentially jamming all hospitals into one mold.

This would be great if we actually knew for a fact that a mold would work for every hospital under every circumstance, but we do not. Picking blindly among so-called solutions that sound good to some folks, simply because no hospital has found the magic bullet yet, sounds like a great way to ensure failure and prevent learning by those entities that are trying in good faith to improve the situation.

Susan Collingwood Assistant dean for educational standards and quality; assistant professor of medical education Nova Southeastern University’s Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine Fort Lauderdale, Fla.