I recommend to you Michael Rindler’s recent book, Strategic Cost Reduction: Leading Your Hospital to Success. He shows how hospitals can achieve a 5% or greater annual cost reduction without compromising quality, safety, or service.
I particularly enjoyed case presentations that showcased the strategies in clinical practice:

A community  hospital demonstrated that hiring additional housekeeping and nursing [...]

In my last post, Collaborative Independence, I referred to physician champions without defining what I meant.  Physician champions are oustanding clinicians who have earned the respect of their peers by caring for patients in a consistent and reliable fashion, delivering great clinical outcomes.  They are the people we turn to when we need medical care.  They [...]

A friend and colleague who is an orthopedic surgeon surprised me with a 2-page response to my article on surgeon frustration. I wrote that physicians’ mastering process skills not taught in medical school or residency, like communication, win-win negotiation, and conflict resolution are key ways that they can improve their leadership skills, practice environment, and [...]

I wanted to alert you to a provocative, well-written post by Tina Wardrop, “Sidestepping the Medical Staff Bidding War.”
The shortages of physicians, demands of a burgeoning elderly population, and economic and family-related physician time- squeeze will create a bidding war unless we create organizations in which physicians want to work by:

offering them a chance to [...]

Most physicians that I know would agree wholeheartedly with Nick Jacobs’ post, “I hate business plans.”  A surgeon protested, “Can you believe that I went into the COO’s office all excited about a new device that would speed recovery and shorten length of stay, and do you know what he told me? ‘Fine, go write [...]

Perhaps traveling to our nation’s capital is hazardous to one’s health.  Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking before approximately 50 physicians in an executive MBA program in Washington.  I was impressed with their energy and eagerness to learn new approaches.  They gave me hope and made me proud to be a physician.  Three [...]

As a class guest speaker last week for healthcare professionals studying for their Masters in Public Health, I was struck by the difference in opinion between the authors of the class readings on strategic planning and the physicians’ attitudes.  The readings talked about the steps in the strategic planning process and the time-tested nature of [...]

I encourage you to read Jeanne Bliss’s post, The State of Customer “Focus” Around the World: 2007 in Review, in which she talks about ways to deliver a better experience for users of our services.  Although her comments arise from observations about other industries, they seem applicable to healthcare:
“The struggle still remains to connect the [...]

Why is it so difficult to engage physicians?
One way to analyze this question may lie in exploring the dual meaning of the word engagement.  The yang, or positive aspect, involves interfacing with another person in a pleasant fashion, as in, “She engaged him in conversation,” or “They are engaged to be married.”  The yin, or [...]

I confess to being a fan of Maggie Mahar’s Health Beat posts.  In  Health Care Spending: The Basics; Spending on Physicians’ Services-Do We Spend Too Much? Part II, she detailed meticulously what lies behind the 22% of the $2.1 million spent last year on physician services.  I agree with her that income disparities between general [...]