Role of hospital leadership in combating the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Hospitals all around the world play an essential role in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. During an epidemic event, hospital leaders frequently face new challenges requiring them to perform unaccustomed tasks, which might be well beyond the scope of their previous practice and experience. While no absolute set of characteristics is necessary in all leadership situations, certain traits, skills and competencies tend to be more critical than others in crisis management times. We will discuss some of the most important ones in this manuscript. To strengthen those managerial competencies needed to face outbreaks, healthcare leaders should be better supported by competency-based training courses as it is more and more clear that traditional training courses are not as effective as they were supposed to be. It seems we should look at the COVID-19 pandemic as a learning opportunity to re-frame what we expect from hospital leaders and to re-think the way we train, assess and evaluate them.

What is “hospital resilience”? A scoping review on conceptualization, operationalization, and evaluation

“…This informs prevention (risk-reduction or mitigation), planning and preparedness. Strengthening pro-active and comprehensive preparedness for all types of hazards is also necessary; especially as studies point to need for shifting the paradigm in toward a proactive, risk-informed, adaptive, innovative, and collaborative approach to HEDRM (3,27,59).…”

Hospitals early challenges and interventions combatting COVID-19 in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

“…With continuously evolving challenges, adaptability, and innovation in hospitals’ readiness for emergencies is necessary, increasing flexible expenditures for health at national and facility-levels along with hospitals autonomy with the appropriate accountability structures will facilitate decision-making and improve operations [ 97 ]. Developing leadership competencies of HMs, integrating public health expertise in hospital management structures, and strengthening health information systems and research capacities at facility-levels are essential learnings from EMR hospitals’ experiences combatting COVID-19 [ 100 ]. Furthermore, in building health systems resilience, multi-pronged (across each of the hospitals readiness domains) and multi-level policies are required to strengthen hospitals’ preparedness, response, and recovery throughout the various stages of the pandemic cycle [ 32 ].…”

From bureaucratic administration to effective intervention: Comparing early governmental responses to the COVID-19 virus across East Asian and western health systems

“…To be certain, a range of other factors (governmental and societal) also influenced the different infectious rates and mortality rates of COVID-19 observed in different areas, e.g. governmental and population acceptance of social distancing, attitudes towards mask usage, the role of medical worker unions, and - importantly - the leadership role of hospital executives 78 and healthcare professionals. 79 However the cases above (with the exception of Denmark) appear to suggest that key limiting factors in the capacity of central governments to respond effectively to the pandemic may well include the extent of reliance on a political/bureaucratic approach to hospital ownership and management combined with funding reliance primarily on tax-generated revenues and publicly administered provider budgets.…”