- This is a preview of the Medical Group Strategy Council's inaugural meeting. Learn more.
Raghu Bukkapatnam, Medical Group Strategy Council
Successful clinical and operations process standardization is vital to health systems’ physician alignment strategies and implicit in their decisions to employ.
However, Medical Group Strategy Council research indicates that to date, most standardization efforts are incremental and occur at the margins, becoming severely constrained or derailed by physician resistance. In order to overcome this, progressive and tenured medical group leaders are adopting principles of “evidence-based management” to activate medical group members and drive performance improvements.
The Council’s 2012 national meeting series, Heart of the Enterprise, will showcase organizations pursuing this physician activation strategy to elevate the value of care. Craft a thoughtful physician activation strategy with these key take-away lessons from the national meeting research.
Physician Activation in Action
Overcome semantic barriers. The most immediate barrier to implementing standards is use of the phrase “standardizing care.” In this situation, semantics do matter. A “standard” is achieved, not engineered, and use of the term communicates the wrong message to physicians and patients. Council research uncovered multiple communication and campaign strategies that are both more engaging and more palatable to physicians, with demonstrable impact on performance.
Understand physician motivators. Leading medical groups successfully isolate the strongest tactics to influence physician behavior, and understand the limits of others. The most effective tactics are patient-focused and data-driven, combining greater transparency, peer comparisons, and outcomes measurement. The Council’s early findings indicate that medical group leaders over-utilize compensation as a lever for change. Over-manipulating compensation frequently fails to drive the desired changes, and creates new engagement challenges. Thus, high performing medical group leaders utilize compensation as a lever for change sparingly and strategically.
Foster a culture of innovation. In high performing medical groups, culture is king. Council research identified a handful of progressive medical group leaders who successfully transformed isolationist physician mindsets to create a culture of innovation, where physicians self-motivate and encourage one another. Medical group members lead initiatives, isolate opportunities, identify best practices, and challenge themselves to provide a higher standard of care.
Register now
To learn more about evidence-based management and activating physicians, Medical Group Strategy Council members may register for the Medical Group Strategy Council national meeting, Heart of the Enterprise. Not a Medical Group Strategy Council member? Visit our website to learn more.
