Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare: A Cultural Analysis

Excellent care for patients was the vision founder of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (MLH), John Sherard had when he decided to build a hospital in 1899. He was concerned about “his Methodist pastor and his care while in the charity ward of a Catholic hospital. His conviction that Memphis should have a Methodist hospital that cared for all people started a movement that eventually became the largest healthcare provider in the Mid-South” ("When It Comes to the Sherards, Methodist is All in the Family," 2015). Parnell, states “the first and most important influence on an organization’s culture is its founder(s) (2014, p. 296). John Sherard’s vision continues and has further been transformed by our current leader, to align further with the

If MLH was going to be the best in the country, the culture needed to be transformed. “You can have all the best talent, the best plans and you can have the best strategy, objectives, and goals. But without the culture piece being absolutely right, we were not going to achieve the kind of results we needed to achieve. It is the magic, if you will, that makes everything else work”, stated CEO Gary Shore during an interview (Salvucci, 2015, para. 2).

I would describe MLH as both an adaptive and inert culture. MLH is adaptive in the sense that our associates embrace changes that are consistent with the core values of the system. As a healthcare organization, our associates strive to ensure we provide the best services. Therefore, as a whole, we make decisions based on evidence-based research. Moreover, we also seek input from our patients and family partners. Utilizing patients and their family members for information on care can be both innovative and risky; however, it has helped our patient satisfaction and readmissions rates

The hospital opened three years ago and had experienced several bouts with growth and expansion. During this time, associates and leaders were hired that were not a strategically a good fit for the organization. Therefore, I would consider our individual hospital as weak culturally. Parnell describes a weak culture as one that “lacks values and ways of thinking that are widely accepted by members of the organization” (2014, p. 297). As we continue to grow and learn from each other, we are steadily improving culturally. However, we still have work on hiring the right associates that embrace the Power of One culture of the MLH