The Final Diagnosis

Harry Tomaselli, intuitive as usual, said, “Don’t worry, Kent. I’ll brief you thoroughly before the staff meeting. We’ll have all the selling points lined up. In fact, when you’re through some people may even want to exceed quota.”

“Don’t count on it.” O’Do

Tomaselli gri

Harry Tomaselli admired forthrightness and swift decisions, mostly because those were methods he used himself as administrator of Three Counties. With swift decisions you sometimes made mistakes, but on the whole you got a lot more done, and your average of hits unproved as time went on. Quickness—of speech and thought, as well as action—was something Harry Tomaselli had learned in courtrooms long before he ever thought of finding his destiny behind a hospital desk.

He had entered law school from college and bad begun to lay the foundations of a good practice when war intervened. Anticipating the draft, he had enlisted in the U.S. Navy where he had received a commission and a job in medical administration. Later, as the navy hospitals filled with wounded, Lieutenant Tomaselli had proven himself an able administrator with an instinct for sensing the invisible border line between the practice of medicine and the business of hospital management.

After the war, faced with the choice of returning to law or remaining in hospital work, he had chosen the latter and enrolled in the School of Hospital Administration at Columbia University. He had graduated from Columbia at a time when there was growing recognition of hospital administration as a specialized field of endeavor in which a medical degree was neither necessary nor particularly useful. This had opened up a brisk demand for good administrators, and after two years as an assistant he had accepted Orden Brown’s offer of the top post at Three Counties.

Now Harry Tomaselli was in love with his work. He shared Kent O’Do

He did this by delegation—he had a happy faculty of appointing good department heads—and also by an intense personal interest in everything that went on within the hospital. Almost nothing of importance escaped Harry Tomaselli. Each day his short, stocky figure could be seen bustling along the corridors but pausing frequently while he talked with nurses, patients, janitors, clerks, cooks—anyone who could tell him something about the hospital or make a suggestion on how to run it better. New ideas excited him; his own enthusiasm engendered more in others. Sometimes, head thrust forward, eyes gleaming behind his big black-rimmed glasses, he would talk volubly, his thoughts moving at a gallop, his hands underscoring points as he made them.

In all his peregrinations Harry Tomaselli seldom made a written note. His lawyer’s training enabled him to carry assorted facts readily in his head. But after each inspection tour he fired off a barrage of staccato memoranda on all points, big and little, where he felt the administration of Three Counties could be improved.

Yet, for all this, he had a diplomat’s sense of tone and language that seldom gave offense. Verbally he would hand out a reprimand, then talk cheerfully of something else. And though he never wasted words, his written memos were always gracious. He hated to fire a hospital employee unless the provocation were really strong. He frequently told his department heads, “If anyone has worked here more than a month, we have an investment in their experience. It’s to our advantage to mold them if we can, rather than try for someone new who may have other faults we haven’t thought of.” Because this policy was known and respected, employee morale was high.

There were still things about the organization that worried him. Some departments, he knew, could be made more efficient. There were areas where service to patients could be improved. A good deal of old equipment needed junking and replacement. There was newly developed equipment—the cine-radiography unit was an example—which, under ideal conditions, the hospital should have. The new building program would make good some of these deficiencies but not all. Like O’Do

His thoughts were brought back to the present by Orden Brown. The chairman was telling O’Do

O’Do

“One of my people is on Rotary executive,” Orden Brown said. “I’ll have him fix it up. That had better be the opening week of the campaign. Then the following week we might do the same thing with Kiwanis.”

O’Do

“By the way,” Orden Brown was saying, “are you free for di

“Yes, I am,” O’Do

“I’d like you to come with me to Eustace Swayne’s.” Seeing O’Do

“Yes, I’ll be glad to come.” All the same, the invitation to the home of the board of directors’ most die-hard member was unexpected. Naturally O’Do

“As a matter of fact, it’s my suggestion,” Brown said. “I’d like you to talk with him about the hospital generally. Let him absorb some of your ideas if you can. Frankly, at times he’s a problem on the board, but you know that, of course.”

“I’ll do what I can.” Now that he knew what was involved, O’Do

The chairman picked up his brief case and prepared to leave. Tomaselli and O’Do

“It will be just a small party,” Orden Brown said. “Probably half a dozen people. Why don’t we pick you up on the way across town? I’ll phone before we leave.”

O’Do

The door had scarcely closed on Orden Brown when tall, slim Kathy Cohen, Tomaselli’s secretary, came in. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said.

“What is it, Kathy?”

She told the administrator, “There’s a man on the phone who insists on talking to you. A Mr. Bryan.”