Practices
Physician Leadership Review
- How well-positioned are you for effective physician alignment?
- What do your physician leaders think about your strategies and support for their leadership effectiveness?
- What do your physicians think about your physician leaders’ effectiveness?
Integrated Healthcare Strategies offers a practical audit to help health delivery organizations (hospitals and medical groups) assess the scope and nature of five dimensions of their physician leadership for enhanced organizational success:
- Numbers and types of physician leaders
- Physician Leader Roles, Responsibilities, and Remuneration
- Clarity of Physician Alignment Strategy
- Support Systems
- Value of Physician Leadership Development
1. The number and types of physician leaders:
- Medical staff officers
- Medical directors
- Physician partners
Our team works with yours to identify and assess the many full and part-time physician leaders you have within your medical staff, serving in various medical directorship roles or as active partners with you in any co-ventures. This is important to ensure your executives and board understand what you have, and to utilize this knowledge to inoculate the organization from the risks of external payer of IRS regulatory reviews.
2. The scope and nature of physician leader roles, responsibilities, and remunerations.
Many hospitals have out-of-date position descriptions and leader related profiles of their multiple physician leaders. Too many have non-existent or inaccurate position descriptions or employment agreements. There is rarely a current “Philosophy or Strategy for Physician Alignment,” nor a “Medical Staff Development Plan.”
Many medical directors or physician leaders have been asked to serve in their roles with little or no orientation and often complain that they are unsure of what the board or CEO expects of them. They have unclear or non-existent performance metrics; and do not fully understand how to achieve their performance goals, if known. Some physician leaders have jobs that compete with or complicate the work of other physician leaders. Our staff conducts surveys, focus groups and interviews of all identified physician leaders to define their degree of role clarity and enthusiasm or frustration, as well as gauge the degree of regulatory, IRS or Que Tam risk.
3. The degree of clarity, understanding and commitment to the organization’s strategy for physician alignment.
Interviews and web-based surveys enable our consulting team to evaluate the scope and nature of your organization’s need for, philosophy and plans to accomplish a “Physician Alignment Strategy.” We also define how well physicians understand the alignment strategies, and their degree of support or resistance to the strategy. Reviewing files and interviewing staff in such varied areas as medical staff office, HR, CFO, VPMA/CMO, CEO, Corporate Council, Office of Medical Education and Business Development, we develop accurate directories and databases that usually range from 10 to 100 full and part-time physician leaders.
4. The quality and quantity of support systems to enable physician leader effectiveness.
Even well trained and motivated physician leaders have a difficult time working alone to achieve their performance goals. Successful physician leaders need IT system support, access to accurate and timely clinical and financial performance reports, experienced administrative support and practical mentoring and partnering from respected nursing, administrative and clinical colleagues. What is the scope and nature of these support arrangements? How well are they working, and how could they be enhanced? Contact our team to explore a collaborative process to define and enhance your resources for improved physician leadership.
5. The value of physician leadership development.
Physician medical directors, like administrative leaders, need a solid foundation of competency based education and training on a wide array of strategic, clinical, financial, process improvement, interpersonal relations, strategic thinking, as well as project and group management skills and knowledge. A solid foundation, however, is not enough; continuous leadership education and development is as essential as their CME. Our staff will assess what you need, what you are doing, physician leader receptivity and concerns and then help refine, design and develop customized “Physician Leadership Academies.” We also help implement and periodically evaluate your progress in all of the above cited areas of interest.
