You may have seen media reports about the Cleveland Clinic's new policy requiring Clinic doctors to publicly disclose any financial relationships a physician might have with a pharmaceutical company or other corporation. Administrators at the Clinic cite a desire for greater transparency in making this information available to patients, and the move follows a number of controversies nationally about potential conflicts of interest within the medical profession. Shortly after the Cleveland Clinic announced its move, Penn Medicine (the physician group of the University of Pennsylvania Health System) made a similar announcement.
This is an admirable move by these two institutions on a couple of levels. First, it indicates that they grasp the concept of corporate transparency, define by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll in their book, The Naked Corporation (Free Press, 2003), as "accessibility of information to stakeholders of institutions, regarding matters that affect their interests." Certainly, it is in a patient's interest to know if his doctor benefits financially from a recommended course of treatment. It is incredible to think that this information has been routinely withheld from patients for years.
But something more important is going on. Lots of businesses like to claim they are leaders, and it is easy to do so if your claim is that you make more widgets than anyone else, or you have the most retail outlets, or you sell your product at the lowest cost.
But bragging rights are not leadership. What the Cleveland Clinic and Penn Medicine have done is to put their stakeholders' interests ahead of their own. Disclosing financial relationships between a doctor and a corporation carries the risk that it might alienate the patient and cause her to seek treatment elsewhere—which is probably why this type of information was traditionally kept under wraps.
Penn Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic may in fact cost themselves a few patients. We predict, however, that by putting patients' need to know first, these institutions will strengthen the relationship between doctor and patient, because that relationship will now be built on greater honesty and openness. That's the foundation for strength and growth in the future.
Other healthcare institutions will no doubt emulate what the Cleveland Clinic and Penn Medicine have done, but the lesson applies across all industries and organizations. By putting their stakeholders' needs ahead of their own, these two institutions are raising the standards for an entire industry. That's leadership to admire.
