Transparency: How Much of a Good Thing?

About the Authors:
Steve Rivkin is managing partner at Rivkin & Associates LLC, a communications and marketing consultancy which has handled assignments for more than 100 hospitals and systems (www.HospitalCrisis.net). Mr. Rivkin can be reached at steve@rivkin.net.

Fraser Seitel is a senior partner at Rivkin & Associates LLC. Mr. Seitel can be reached at fraser@rivkin.net.

Overview:
Move over, “paradigm.” Step aside, “synergy.” Make way for “Transparency”—today’s clarion call in health care.

From all corners of society—from government to corporate America to the media to health care—transparency has become a drumbeat for greater openness, candor and transparency.

However, transparency, as you’ll see, is much more than disclosing the cost of treating pneumonia.

Based on two decades of consulting with more than 100 hospitals and health care systems, and countless conversations with hospital executives, trustees and medical staff leaders, we propose to explore transparency along these six venues:

1. How best to define transparency?
2. Who are its constituents?
3. How is it viewed by health care leaders?
4. What is the law of the land?
5. What are the benefits?
6. What are the risks?

And throughout this publication, and in examining a case study that could play out at your institution, we put this—the core—question on the table: If transparency is a good thing, then can there be too much of a good thing?

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