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 participate proactively in decision-making
• tear down the barriers to physicians in leadership positions
• help physicians have a life while they practice medicine by reducing the burden of practice management
• find novel solutions to deal with emergency call, such as hiring specialists or considering deferred compensation alternatives
• share information in an electronic health record that is user-friendly and links the inpatient and outpatient continuum seamlessly
• revitalizing phyisician practice networks
• improving quality and safety

In a previous post, “Collaborative Error: The Day I Nearly Quit“, I wrote that the old paradigm of physicians and nurses taking care of clinical dimensions of care and administrators keeping finance and operations to themselves does not work any more.  The decision not to reimburse for never events, such as wrong-site surgery, falls, hospital-acquired infections, and bed-sores acquired during a hospital stay requires a collaborative effort among clinical, administrative, and board team members.  So does improving patient flow, as discussed in “Collaborative Flow.”

Although much has been made about differences between baby-boomer and generation-X physicians, they both need to make their time count.  Healthcare settings can help to unite physicians and improve collaboration by systematically examining processes and policies to make sure that every step and requirement adds value to the patient’s experience. 

Merely flowing each step of a process onto a post-it note, putting the notes on a wall, and stepping back to see how a process is supposed to work, how it really occurs, and how it could work to improve the care experience can be eye-opening and decrease the need for additional employees to deal with work-arounds of inefficient processes.

What do you think?

• Are we headed toward a bidding war
• If so, what steps can we take to deal with it proactively
• Has anyone ever asked a physician, “What can I take off your plate,” rather than adding on

I welcome your input.

Kenneth H. Cohn