Dr. Jeffrey Cohen deflects a lot credit to his team, “I ask them for their help,” he says. But his leadership style helped foster a culture at Allegheny General Hospital that allowed the Pittsburgh hospital to come together in the aftermath of the Tree of Life mass shooting. Cohen spoke with Modern Healthcare Managing Editor Matthew Weinstock. The following is an edited transcript.
Cohen: (After being named president in 2016) I said to my team, “I have one goal. I’m here to take care of sick people. And I don’t give a whatever who they are, who insures them, if they have none, your job is to take care of them and get them out of the hospital because nobody wants to be here.” Everyone buys into this.
I stole a line from (President John F.) Kennedy. He was at NASA walking around, he sees a guy standing in the hall, and he’s one of the cleaning people. The president walks up to him and says, “Hi, what’s your name? What do you do here?” He goes, “Mr. Kennedy, I’m here to help put a man on the moon.”
I walked into the hospital after hearing this story and I saw one of the environmental services people, his name is Woody. I said, “Woody, what do you do here?” He says, “I clean the floors.” I said, “No, you don’t, Woody. You’re here to take care of patients. You do it by making sure that the rooms are clean, and they don’t get infected.” A big smile (came across his face). He buys into the mission. He tells everybody else in EVS.
Just as there are social determinants of health, there are the social determinants of employment. You’re recognizing their basic humanity, which is the flip side of what happened at Tree of Life. In dehumanizing populations—in New Zealand it was Muslims, in Pittsburgh it was Jews—words mean things.
MH: The environment you’ve created at Allegheny helped your team respond …
Cohen: I didn’t create the environment, my team did.
MH: OK, but that starts with leadership.
Cohen: It does start at the top, but one of the key characteristics of a leader is humility. It’s not me, it’s we.
The fundamental essence of healthcare is trust.
You trust me to do something in your interest, which is very different than the business relationships that the rest of the world sees.
(As news of the shooting spread), people were texting me and asking, “Are you OK?” I said, “We’re safe. But I’m not OK.” I’m trying to get my head around this thing. We live about 75 yards from Tree of Life. Where the police were congregating was where I would take the kids to get on the bus to go to school every day.
I talked to the shooter that night. He’s just a guy. He’s all alone. He lost his job in manual labor. Worked in a bakery. And he was lost. He had no one to talk to. He heard about these migrant caravans that the president was talking about, “They’re coming to kill you.” He was going to go deal with this because (the caravan of migrants) were being supported by HIAS (a Jewish not-for-profit) that I’d never heard of. So he’s going to go shoot up a synagogue.
What did he get? He got Rose Mallinger, 97. Joyce Feinberg is 75. Jerry Rabinowitz just retired at 66. Daniel and Cecil Rosenthal, handicapped. We know all these people. They’re not a threat to anybody.
I come in Monday morning and the hospital was in mourning. They wanted me to say, “It’s OK.” And I’m watching this mass mourning that’s going on. We’re better than this.
And then you heard the Muslim community said, “We will stand guard in front of your synagogues.” The bishop had prayer sessions and collections. Everybody stood up. I couldn’t go to these things. It was too painful for me.
You don’t teach leadership, you demonstrate it. And your words matter. And how you talk to people and how you treat them is how they will treat your patients, each other, you.
So that’s the guiding philosophy. My senior staff all knows that. I don’t tell them what to do. I ask them for their help. Because I’m not an administrator, I’m a urologist.
