Engaging the Physician Workforce

Topics: Employee Communication, Employee Engagement, Workforce, Employee Recognition, Employee Satisfaction, Hospital-Physician Alignment, Physician Issues, Leadership

By reading this study, members will learn:

• Engagement drivers proven to be most critical for physicians
• Strategies for incorporating behavioral standards into physician performance transparency
• Best practices for improving physician leadership development and targeting high-potential physician leadership candidates
• Essential elements of physician onboarding that create sustained engagement

Executive Summary

Hospital-physician alignment more crucial than ever

Dramatic industry changes have made hospital-physician alignment a top strategic priority. Whether securing market share and profitable volumes, improving cost-of-care efficiency, or navigating emerging risk-based payment models, hospitals cannot address any of these crucial imperatives without strong physician partners.

Succeeding in this environment will require a level of physician integration far deeper and broader than most organizations have today.

Employment alone does not guarantee integration

In answer to this challenge, hospitals leaders are increasingly turning to physician employment, which has quickly become the dominant model across the industry. Unfortunately, hospitals relying solely on employment agreements to achieve stronger physician integration will be sorely disappointed.

While employment can serve as a preliminary step, its full promise can be realized only by recasting the traditional view of hospital-physician relationships and actively pursuing true physician engagement.

Strategies to forge stronger hospital-physician relationships

To engage physicians, we recommend that organizations:

• Identify and address physician-specific engagement drivers
• Enhance physician leadership skills to ensure organizational leaders have strong and effective physician partners to help guide physician-engagement efforts
• Sustain and build upon new hires’ naturally higher engagement by creating a separate and targeted strategy to proactively integrate new physicians into organizational culture

Read the study to learn more

Engaging the Physician Workforce provides 15 best practices for successfully executing the Center’s three-part physician engagement strategy. This will help hospital and health system leaders to improve physician engagement and build stronger and more sustainable relationships with critical physician partners.

Essay: Defining the Physician Engagement Ambition