Expert: Treating healthcare as a calling, not a business
Because healthcare is a calling, we must cease trying to run it like a business, according to McGill Professor Henry Mintzberg. In a new commentary published in BMJ Leader, he discusses how the corporatization of healthcare is changing the practice of medicine, causing many physicians to feel alienated from their work.
Henry Mintzberg, John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies, Desautels Faculty of Management
“Healthcare is a calling that resides in the personal proficiency of professionals, beyond the technical efficiency of systems. Accordingly, we cannot manage it like a business. This Commentary offers a sequence of five postulates, beginning with the assertion that healthcare suffers from success and ending with a plea for communityship beyond leadership.”
Henry Mintzberg is a John Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies as well as the Academic Director of the International Masters Program for Managers (IMPM) in the Desautels Faculty of Management. His areas of expertise include public, private and social organizations in a balanced society.
henry.mintzberg [at] mcgill.ca (English)