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Collaborative Recruitment

I am evolving in my role.  Several years ago, I regarded myself as someone who brought data to stimulate conversations, more of a guide from the side than the sage on the stage.  Lately, I see myself as a worker bee (hopefully not a drone) who collects pollen and disseminates it to those who find the ideas fertile.

This week was formative, as I traveled to the lovely northern foothills of San Antonio, currently the 7th largest city in the US, to speak at the HCA Rural Retreat, sponsored by Methodist Health System .  I was impressed by the sense of possibility among the participants and the way that they welcomed change as an opportunity to improve care for their communities.  At the reception preceding my talk on using physician recruitment to move from me to we, I heard about a hospital in Seguin that has used a physician advisory panel to advise on recruitment for the past decade to improve patient access. 

A combination of primary care practitioners and specialists appointed by the medical staff guide the deliberations regarding hiring, which avoids struggles between the hospital leaders and physicians who feel that they have the right-sized practice and do not need any more physicians in town.  Hospital leaders attend the panel’s meetings, but do not vote. 

This data-driven process, led by physicians who have earned the respect of their colleagues, builds consensus on both the need to hire additional physicians and, once the process is underway, on whether a specific physician represents a good cultural fit for the area.  As a result, they have had 100% retention of new hires for the last five years.  

In Collaborative Culture, I described the paradox of culture.  As I mentioned in my book, Collaborate for Success! (p. xiv), culture encompasses the beliefs, habits, attitudes, and assumptions that an organization uses to cope with problems.  Executives make time to shape organizational culture because a strong culture allows leaders to delegate tasks and become more productive.

However, most physicians enjoy bottom-up processes more than top-down edicts.  They have told me that they much prefer being inspired to being supervised.  The only way that I know to develop a common culture is to allow physicians to play a role in shaping it. 

 In Collaborative Champions, I wrote that physicians can become hospital advocates if they feel that, as physicians, people are listening to them and that they are making their time count.   In that way, they can leave a lasting legacy at a time in their lives when the marginal value of seeing one more patient or doing one more procedure start to diminish. 

 The most fruitful ways to cultivate physician champions include:

• Engaging them in conversations likely to lead to results, for example:
  • What is going well for you?
  • What things are we doing that waste your time?
  • How can we improve care for our community
• Drawing up an action plan that shows meaningful outcomes at 2-week intervals
• Reviewing progress with physicians at least monthly
• Closing the loop
• Celebrating success at least quarterly

What do you think about using a physician panel of generalists and specialists to facilitate recruitment and retention?As always, I welcome your input to improve healthcare collaboration.

Kenneth H. Cohn

© 2010, all rights reserved

Posted in Building on Success

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