225: The “Anchor Mission” Playbook — Bringing higher purpose to your team
Mission in Action
Today on the show we bring a demonstration of living a mission. Our guest is Doug Brown, President of UMass Memorial Community Hospitals and Chief Administrative Officer for the UMass Memorial Health Care system. He had a vision for their community - looking in their own backyard and anchoring their institutional mission through local investing, local procurement, and local hiring.
As a $2.4 billion integrated health care delivery system in Central Massachusetts, Umass Memorial’s “Anchor Mission Project” is addressing the social determinants of health beyond the traditional approach of providing excellent clinical care. UMass Memorial is putting their money where their mouth is by investing part of their institutional portfolio in local resources, purchasing directly from local businesses, and hiring a greater percentage from the surrounding community.
We hope you take the time to watch this interview and be inspired to develop your own anchor mission.
Links & Notes
“Anchoring Health beyond Clinical Care: UMass Memorial Health Care’s Anchor Mission Project” — Harvard.edu
Harvard School of Public Health Highlights UMass Memorial’s Anchor Journey — DemocracyCollaborative.org
UMass community hospitals chief appointed to AHA trustees — Telegram.com
UChicago Joins the Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative — The University of Chicago Civic Engagement
About Douglas S. Brown
Doug Brown is President of UMass Memorial Community Hospitals and Chief Administrative Officer for the UMass Memorial Health Care system. UMass Memorial is a $2.4 Billion integrated health care delivery system in Central Massachusetts with over 13,000 employees. The system includes approximately 30 corporate entities, including an academic medical center, 2 community hospitals, a large physician group practice and numerous related entities. It is the clinical partner of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
In his current role, Mr. Brown has a wide range of system responsibilities, including oversight of UMass Memorial’s two community hospitals, its behavioral health provider, and oversight over several system corporate functions, including human resources, legal affairs, governance, compliance, internal audit, government affairs, and health policy and public programs. He also currently leads the system’s anchor mission work.
Mr. Brown has a breadth of experience in both the private sector, where he worked at two large law firms, and the public sector, where he served in leadership roles in two separate branches of Massachusetts state government. These roles included service as an Assistant Attorney General, as General Counsel of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, and finally as Director of the state Medicaid program in 2003 before coming to UMass Memorial.
