Recorded April 2021
Marc Boom, MD is CEO of Houston Methodist, a 2,300+ bed hospital network consistently ranked among the country’s best by U.S. News & World Report, and named by Fortune as one of America’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”
Houston Methodist is also the first hospital system in the country to mandate vaccines against COVID-19. As a faith-based institution which focuses on patients well-being above all else, the decision to make vaccines mandatory was obvious for CEO Dr. Marc Boom.
His goal is to be the safest system of hospitals on the planet. Because, in his words, “what could be worse than a healthcare professional giving an infectious disease to a patient who subsequently suffered or died as a result?”
In February of 2021, two of Houston Methodist’s 200+ bed community hospitals completely lost power and water, one of them for 72 hours and the other for 48 hours, as a result of Texas’ freeze and power crisis. They were also in the midst of the COVID-19 a pandemic, and Houston had already experienced multiple surges.
All Houston Methodist hospitals have generators, so power loss was not a huge problem. The hospitals also have water tanks, but there’s only capacity for a few hours, not days.
In order to provide water to care for patients, flush toilets, and drink, those hospitals got creative by bringing in trucks, collecting rainwater once it got warmer, and rigging a system to flush toilets.
Houston Methodist staff were managing this all while dealing with the impacts of the storm and the pandemic in their personal lives.
