Ten Keys to Physician Retention
6. Add Physician Leaders Physicians traditionally have achieved leadership roles in hospitals through board memberships, medical directorships and committee assignments. These leadership roles have allowed physicians to have influence over the patient care issues which of are most importance to them, particularly at the departmental level. However, the role of physician leaders is magnified in the era of reimbursement reform as they are viewed as the key change agents needed to implement the transition from the fee-for-service delivery model to the value-based model. If physicians are going to be evaluated and paid on their adherence to evidence-based treatment protocols and to quality metrics, they may expect that these protocols and metrics will be defined by their fellow doctors. They then can trust that protocols will be good for patients and not just for the bottom-line. The same principle holds true for electronic health records (EHR), which can be made more palatable to the medical staff when selected by physician leaders who understand the clinical and patient interaction implications of various systems.
Physician leaders can play a pivotal role in getting medical staff members to embrace the levers of healthcare reform (quality payments, population health, standardized care, EHR), provided such leaders are perceived to have real authority and are not mere figureheads. A growing number of hospitals and health systems are seeking physician CEOs or are creating new titles such as Chief Transition Officers (CTOs) to ensure physician leaders have the authority they need to implement change. In the 2020 Survey of America’s Physicians that Merritt Hawkins conducted on behalf of The Physicians Foundation, physicians were asked to rate the most important policy steps that could be taken to ensure better access to quality care for all. Their first priority was to increase access to health insurance, but their second priority was to increase the number of physician leaders. It therefore is in the facility’s best interest to incorporate multiple avenues by which physicians can evolve as leaders,
including mentoring and future leadership programs, and to encourage their participation in governance and administrative issues. All physicians, in the broad sense, are leaders as they direct the patient care experience. Some are latent administrative as well as clinical leaders, and it will be increasingly important in the future for hospitals to identify and develop the leadership capabilities of key medical staff members.
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