Social Capital in Healthcare

How Trust and Teamwork Drive Organizational Excellence

Lee, Thomas H.

1. Edition January 2025
240 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd

ISBN: 978-1-394-31265-8

John Wiley & Sons

Sample Chapter

Further versions

Harness the power of social capital to improve the efficacy and efficiency of healthcare organizations

Written by Thomas Lee, Chief Medical Officer at Press Ganey, Social Capital in Healthcare describes a new and powerful framework for improving healthcare, arguing that managers should approach the work of building trust, teamwork, and high reliability with the same intensity and discipline as CFOs use when managing the finances of their organizations.

Lee's powerful framework integrates management priorities such as safety, quality, patient experience, and workforce resilience/burnout/loyalty, demonstrating through data that these "silos" are in fact intertwined, and the work of improving them is best taken on with a single focus: improving social capital.

In this book, readers will learn about:

* Key social capital themes in healthcare, including trust, respect, connectedness, and teamwork

* The necessity of social capital in healthcare due to changes in medicine, patients, and society

* Building social capital through transitivity, reciprocity, bridging connections, and driving the right values

* Social capital initiatives at institutions such as the Mayo Clinic, Houston Methodist, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Drawing upon deeply respected work from sociology, psychology, and business strategy, Social Capital in Healthcare earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all forward-thinking healthcare executives, managers, and consultants.

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1 A Primer on Social Capital 9

2 Why Healthcare Needs Social Capital Now 35

3 Building, Strengthening, and Using Social Capital Connections 67

4 Building Teams and Networks in Healthcare 93

5 Measuring Social Capital 123

6 Social Capital as the Core of Healthcare Strategy 149

7 How to Be a Chief Officer for Social Capital 169

References 199

Acknowledgments 207

About the Author 211

Index 213

"Social capital, quite simply the quality of our connections with others, forms the foundation of efficient, patient-centered care and engagement and meaning for healthcare providers. Dr. Thomas H Lee has written a compelling new book that explains this and illustrates how social capital is the key to turning healthcare around."

--Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and author of Right Kind of Wrong

THOMAS H. LEE, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer of Press Ganey and the Editor-in-Chief of NEJM Catalyst. He is a practicing physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and has 18 years' experience as a senior leader at Mass-General Brigham. He's an expert in healthcare strategy and policy and a member of the Panel of Health Advisors of the Congressional Budget Office.

T. Lee, Press Ganey Associates, LLC, IL