My hospital took my March Madness away from me.

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

I *THINK* that this is the most appropriate forum for this thread. If not, please feel free to move it, mod.

Wanted to bounce this off of you all and see what you think...

Okay, I work in an approximately 120 bed hospital that employs about 500. We are not run by any sort of religious organization; we are not in any way a not- for-profit hospital. We are run by a large corporation.

Well, being a HUGE college basketball fan... every year I have looked forward to March Madness.. I look forward to watching the games, but also every year my hospital has had a NCAA Tournament "pool" where any employees who wanted to participate could fill out a tournament bracket, and then compete to see who was the most accurate in their picks. The winner got 75 dollars, the second place got 50, and the third place got 25 dollars. It wasn't a real "pool" because employees who wanted to participate didn't have to put in any money; the award just came from the hospital budget. And, overall it was just a nice, fun thing for the employees to get to do every year.

This year, it has been taken away from us. We all got an email from the hospital's chief information officer, saying first of all that he had asked our IT department to take the brackets off of the hospital's Intranet site (employees could go onto the site and fill out brackets), and said that it was an inappropriate use of the hospital's computer resources, or something like that. He then went on about how it was gambling... even though it was not a real "pool" it was still gambling, and it was still "inconsistent with our hospital's mission". He basically said also, that it would cause the community to look down upon our hospital, knowing that gambling goes on in our hospital.

I emailed him back. I first of all agreed with him that yes, it was unecessary and maybe inappropriate to have the brackets on the Intranet site (last year was actually the first year that the contest was executed that way; before then people just filled out pieces of paper and turned them in to someone). I also suggested that instead of the money coming out of the hospital's budget, employees COULD actually put in their own money, but instead of getting the whole pot as a prize, winners would get other prizes bought with SOME of the money, and the rest could go to the United Way.

I also pointed out that, uhhhh... we live in Central Kentucky. College basketball fan central. MANY businesses in the area have NCAA Tournament pools, and really, our public at large is NOT going to look down on our hospital because the employees have a tourney bracket-picking contest.

I just thought that, overall, the mail that he sent did a pretty good job of dancing around the true issue. The hospital didn't have this little activity in the budget, so they were taking yet another fun, nice thing away from us.

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RealNurseWitch, I sit on the fence with this one. I agree with the administrator, that the hospital should not be spending money on this. Health care costs are already rocketing beyond affordability. Too, it's my opinion that it's not appropriate for the facility's website. However, I think employee moral is important, and games are fun. (I don't like gambling, personally.) What's to say that the ones who want to play pitch in, and the pot is divided in an agreeable way. You could get, say, UK hats, scarves, or something of the sort, for the winners, and the remaining funds donated to a local charity. That's more of a win-win solution for all. Good luck.

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Gambling is illegal...

Most office pools are gambling, and therefore are illegal

but what the boss doesnt know about....

I think it was a bit much to have had the brackets on the intranet

and maybe he is mad that UK is only an 8 seed with a 21-12 record, and thinks the coach should be fired (like me).

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Specializes in ER.

If everyone contributed a buck they could call it fundraising.

After the betting was over you could use the leftover money to buy a live woodchuck and use it as a hospital mascot. Said woodchuck could live in the admin offices and by next year may have been able to chew the stick out of your CEO's butt.

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Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
If everyone contributed a buck they could call it fundraising.

After the betting was over you could use the leftover money to buy a live woodchuck and use it as a hospital mascot. Said woodchuck could live in the admin offices and by next year may have been able to chew the stick out of your CEO's butt.

BWAHH!! :rotfl:

It might be a stretch, but I can see the CEO's point about inappropriate use of computer resources, etc.

Where I live, gambling is illegal but it is a BIG part of the culture. You'd be hard-pressed to find a workplace here without a NCAA pool.

Take your pool "underground" -- I predict the money will be bigger. ;)

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why not just run it outside of hospital grounds, set up a website or something. i know at the hospital i worked at the nurses ran superbowl pools, but they got shut down. the doctors ended up picking it up and running it instead. hospital never tried to tell them anything because they were doctors.

ive even seen doctors run "see who gets canned pools" at the hospital when the ceo goes on a firing rampage.

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Specializes in Nursing Professional Development.

I am a former "Cameron Crazy" who plays online poker for real money every day. So obviously, I am a college basket fan and gambler.

However ... I can understand the hospital's point-of-view. It's one thing for someone to do something for fun in their personal life that is not totally sanctioned by society. It's another thing for a business to become openly so involved. Corporations have to be very careful about such things these days -- for a lot of reasons. They are being cautious and I don't blame them.

Get together with some friends .... watch games ... have pools ... etc. Keep it fairly small time and use your own resources and it is unlikely that anyone will care. But respect their right to err on the side of caution and leave them officially out of the business of promoting and facilitating an activity that some people define as illegal.

Have fun !

llg

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Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.

Thanks all. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on this. I agree with a lot of what you all said; that it was, at least, inappropriate for the hospital to put it's own funds towards this. I just wish that the administration would have explored other options before just saying "we aren't going to do this anymore, period".

Ah well... I'm off to ESPN.com to fill out my bracket.

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