title: Leadership and priority setting: the perspective of hospital CEOs.
abstract: The role of leadership in health care priority setting remains largely unexplored. While the management leadership literature has grown rapidly, the growing literature on priority setting in health care has looked in other directions to improve priority setting practices--to health economics and ethical approaches. Consequently, potential for improvement in hospital priority setting practices may be overlooked. A qualitative study involving interviews with 46 Ontario hospital CEOs was done to describe the role of leadership in priority setting through the perspective of hospital leaders. For the first time, we report a framework of leadership domains including vision, alignment, relationships, values and process to facilitate priority setting practices in health services' organizations. We believe this fledgling framework forms the basis for the sharing of good leadership practices for health reform. It also provides a leadership guide for decision makers to improve the quality of their leadership, and in so doing, we believe, the fairness of their priority setting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Health Sciences Building, 155 College Street, Suite 425, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5T 3M6. david.reeleder@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reeleder
authors.forename: Vivek
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Goel
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Singer
authors.forename: Douglas K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Martin
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D016542:Chief Executive Officers, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration / Q000523:psychology*; D003142:Communication; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003659:Decision Making, Organizational; D006040:Goals; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006292:Health Priorities / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007857:Leadership; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009042:Motivation; D009864:Ontario; D015279:Organizational Culture; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D016134:Organizational Policy; D011050:Policy Making; D011361:Professional Competence; D024382:Professional Role / Q000523:psychology*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012649:Self Concept; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires