Engagement is the buzz word for the 21st century in healthcare. Nowhere is it more commonly applied than in the expression “physician engagement”. Sometimes it is not only a matter of knowing what we should be doing to engage physicians, but also a matter of knowing what not to do that […]
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What once seemed like a burden became a gift. It doesn’t take long, after becoming a physician leader for a hospital or healthcare system, when you will be approached about starting up a program. My experience working for a large integrated delivery network was no different. When I was a […]
Read MoreIf you want to improve “physician engagement”, engage….physicians. We can start this by dropping the phrase “physician engagement”. It tends to be used as a way of framing all of what is wrong in healthcare. So often I hear people declare that if we only had more physician engagement we […]
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It’s an oversimplification to suggest that a physician’s practice could come down to two key drivers, and yet without focusing on these key drivers all of them would struggle to keep their doors open. The key drivers are work-flow and cash-flow. They impact everything, and just about every physician is aware […]
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A few years ago I ran into a surgical colleague who was complaining that his referrals were decreasing. He was convinced that it was a plot by his competition to steal his business. He was also convinced that the hospital was in on it. He described what he was certain […]
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The clinical practice change we implemented was supposed to be easy. It was a simplified version of an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) program for patients undergoing bowel surgery. It was implemented in 18 hospitals and involved over 100 surgeons. Two key process steps were identified and tracked. They were early ambulation (patients […]
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George Box, the statistician, once quipped that “All models are wrong, but some are useful“. The same could be said of data, in that all data is imperfect, but some data can be useful. When working with data there is a tendency to either completely ignore the data as irrelevant, […]
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“Don’t waste too much time with this one Terry. It’s just another doctor with nothing better to do than complain.” This was the advice I received, along with a long list of forwarded emails that found its final resting spot in my Inbox. It was a complaint regarding a recent change […]
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“They’re refusing to comply, now what do we do?” That was the first thing I heard from one of our facility Chief Medical Officers (CMO) after implementing an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) Program for bowel surgery across our system. ERAS programs were well established in the literature, so I […]
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One of the greatest challenges in healthcare today is aligning the goals of physicians with that of the hospital administration. There isn’t a member of the hospital C-Suite or Medical Staff who hasn’t tried to tackle this challenge. So what is it about those who succeed that is different from […]
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