Redefining Physician Engagement

January 27th, 2012 by Kenneth Cohn

Dr. Cohn facilitating retreat on physician engagement

I believe that there are no coincidences in life.  So, the night before the retreat, when the outgoing Medical Staff President served me a beer, I found a two-word summary for my one-page biographical sketch, loose cannon.
We began with physicians, an administrator, and  Board Chair discussing what the journey of engagement meant to them.
The CEO, leveraged  his knowledge of furniture-making, telling us that what strengthened a three-legged stool, are the spindles that connect the three

Connecting spindles strengthen a stool

legs. He made the healthcare analogy that the spindles of transparency, a shared mission and vision, and continued communication strengthened the interdependent legs of the medical staff, administration, and Board.
The Chief Medical Officer summarized his web search on physician engagement by saying that it represented the intersection of four overlapping circles: clinical integration, alignment, loyalty, and satisfaction.  He added that the definition of engagement is two-sided, with a pledge (as in marriage) and a battle (as in engaging the enemy).  I gave a national perspective of case presentations on redefining physician engagement, ending with the spindles of connect, collaborate, succeed.
We discussed our experiences with redefining physician engagement at our round tables and through a process of ritual dissent, a spokesperson took our three-minute summary to three other tables for their input, returning to our table after each round to tell us what he learned.  Each time we went through the process, we went deeper and defined our terms more clearly.  The insights that we discovered together include:
  • Conflicting opinions in times of rapid change are inevitable.  When properly managed through transparency, predictability, and mutual respect, conflict can build trust.
  • A social compact that invited physicians to communicate and buy-in could avoid surprises, set ground rules, and guide daily behavior
  • Chunking long-term tasks into 2-3 week outcome-related milestones, quick fixes that are fixed correctly to the mutual satsfaction of both parties, and celebrating success are ways that we can start now to improve physician engagement.
 A senior VP correctly pointed out that physician engagement involves the engagement of all stakeholders to improve care, saying:
Physician engagement is an intentional and deliberate process to bring physicians and other stakeholders together to address problems and continuously improve care and the patient experience.

It is learning and sharing experiences like the one that I have described above that make me feel blessed to do the work that I do.  As always, I welcome your input to improve healthcare collaboration.

Kenneth H. Cohn

© 2012, all rights reserved

Disclosure:

I have not received any compensation for writing this content. I have no material connection to the brands, topics and/or products that are mentioned herein.

Posted in Physician Engagement

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Time: January 27, 2012, 5:35 pm

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