Productive outrage: An essential leadership quality to create health equity

At the beginning of my career, I was a newly minted CEO of a struggling hospital in the U.S. Virgin Islands when a young man arrived in the emergency department with a severe gunshot wound. To survive, he needed a blood transfusion – fast. But we were at the mercy of island blood banks; the local government prohibited hospitals from managing their own procurement. The bank refused to send additional blood because the hospital had an unpaid bill. I knew the clock was ticking and called the territorial finance administrator. After navigating mind-boggling, unnecessary red tape, we got the blood needed to save that young man’s life. While he made a full recovery, his care and healing were jeopardized because of bureaucratic and financial messes that had absolutely nothing to do with him.