Becker's Hospital Review

20 POPULATION HEALTH 20 CEO / STRATEGY The unapologetic leadership of Dr. Marc Boom By Molly Gamble M arc Boom, MD, revisited the de- cisions he's made as president and CEO of Houston Methodist throughout the pandemic with a sense of con- viction that can almost leave one under the impression it's been an easy 22 months. It is the Monday before anksgiving, Nov. 22, 2021. Dr. Boom is technically "not work- ing" today, but he's nonetheless in his office to catch up on some work, including nearly an hour fielding questions from me. To be clear: I'm hardly special. Dr. Boom decided early on in the pandemic that Houston Methodist would never say no to the press. "And we haven't," he said. "I have a cadre of 30 to 40 people around the institution who have spent more time with the press now than in their entire careers. I certainly have. We saw that as critically important for keeping the flow of good information out there, and we later realized how important it was to fight the flow of misinformation out there." To keep lines of communication open is a smart position to take given how much national attention Houston Methodist has received over the past 22 months. A few highlights: It was the first hospital in the na- tion to treat COVID-19 patients with con- valescent plasma therapy. It was one of the first five clinical trial sites in the country to offer antiviral drug remdesivir as an inves- tigational therapy for COVID-19 patients. And, of course, it was the first system in the country to mandate COVID-19 vaccination for its workforce. The wider public learned of the decision in March 2021, but Houston Methodist em- ployees saw it coming months beforehand. As early as June 2020, Houston Methodist leaders were discussing vaccines in-depth during town hall meetings, including the status of vaccines and timelines from drugmakers, safety and immune respons- es. "We laid that groundwork week aer week, and shared studies for transparen- cy and education," said Dr. Boom, a dually trained physician board-certified in in- ternal and geriatric medicine who earned an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. By mid-September 2020, three months be- fore the vaccines received emergency use authorization from the FDA, Dr. Boom be- gan to build expectations for a vaccinated workforce. "We were saying to people, 'Once they're authorized, shown to be safe, used in enough people and widely available, you should anticipate that we will mandate these just like we mandate flu vaccination,'" said Dr. Boom. Houston Methodist was among the first hospitals in the nation to require flu shots for employees in 2009. Dr. Boom said making COVID-19 vaccina- tions mandatory for staff was the right thing to do, but did create noise, especially exter- nally. "Never underestimate how much noise a small group of individuals can make. But in a strange sort of way, they actually served our cause even greater: ey highlighted the fact nationally that we were doing the right thing," he said. "I think those individuals helped bring along more vaccine mandates by the noise they made." By its vaccination deadline of June 7, 2021, 178 full-time or part-time employees out of 24,947 workers did not get fully vaccinated or were not granted an exemption or deferral. ree weeks later, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by employees of Houston Methodist over the mandate. "We already have a values-based culture and now this builds on that culture — one that is even more patient-centric and one where people know when it comes to what it takes to protect patients, we are unwavering and unyielding. We will not bow to external pressure when we know the right thing to do," said Dr. Boom. If there was one misjudgment made through- out the process of creating and enforcing the mandate, Dr. Boom said it's the pace at which he expected other hospitals to follow. "I was sure there were a bunch of other organiza- tions literally about to do this along with us, because it was so logical. Vaccines were wide- ly available at that point. It surprised us that it took as long as it did." The game-changers at Houston Methodist e vaccination policy and position of nev- er-say-no to press inquiries are byproducts of seemingly contradictory principles Dr. Boom and his leadership team adopted early on that came to inform countless day-to-day decisions. Here are those principles, in his words, along with other decisions and factors that have helped buoy Houston Methodist throughout the pandemic. 1. A tenured executive team. At the start of the pandemic, Dr. Boom had been CEO for more than eight years and at the institution for almost 22. His executive team is made up of nine leaders, including him. Collectively, they have more than 150 years of tenure with Houston Methodist. e team has worked to- gether without any changes for about seven years, when the most recent person joined. is longevity lends itself to major system- wide decisions almost feeling instinctive be- cause of their familiarity working together. "I had a team that was very tenured," he said. "To work with people who you've known for a long period of time — you know the ins and outs, the strengths and weaknesses. You have almost an understood language. You can talk in five-word sentences, move on and every- one goes and does their thing. ere are a lot of advantages to that." 2. e commitment to be data-driven and apolitical. Houston Methodist aimed to stay as far away from politics as it could. Movement toward either end of the political spectrum, or even the appearance of such, can prove especially problematic given that Houston is politically split. In 2020, 56 per- cent of Harris County voted for President Joe Biden and 43 percent for former President Donald Trump, making it an outlier in the red state. But Dr. Boom took the position not so much to avoid political rancor (he points to both parties for politicizing the pandemic, in fact), but to stick with science. "My view was we will work with every elected official — regardless of red, blue, whatever — who we can help in helping the public or they can help us in helping the public," he said. "We'd always stick with the data, wherever it led us. Little did we know how ridiculously politicized the data would become." 3. e decision to take a stand where and when it matters. Dr. Boom emphasized that "apolitical" is not synonymous with "apathet- ic." At times, following the science brought Houston Methodist to positions that neither Democrats nor Republicans clamored to endorse. "Sometimes, when you take a stand, you have to do things that while apolitical may be perceived as political or one par- ty may not be happy with what you did," he said. "In summer 2020, we spent about a mil- lion bucks wrapping the Houston Chronicle [with advertisements] urging the citizens of Houston to wear masks over Fourth of July weekend because we had no mask mandate. On the flip side, we had other political forces at play that really wanted us to throw up our hands and say, 'Shut the whole world down again.' We pushed back on that, because we

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