Enhanced Physician Engagement

Ahhhh, enhancing physcian engagement! Possible? Easy? Complex? Important? How to do it?

Highly engaged physicians help their organizations navigate changing delivery and payment models, improve clinical outcomes, and meet patient demands for better access to safe, quality care. Yet, understanding what physician engagement truly is—and how you can successfully implement it—can be confounding.

Making physician engagement a top strategic and tactical priority is simply mandatory if organizations expect to have success in the near and longer term future. With complex challenges such as the re-design of much of the healthcare industry resulting from the pandemic, physician shortages, the needs of a large and rapidly aging population, population health management, new and different kinds of payment programs, value based purchasing, cost containment, improved quality & safety, care management, and avoiding Medicare penalties, among others, physician engagement must be a top level focus for all organizations.

Giving physicians what they wanted — such as access to the operating room and a supportive nursing staff — is what drove good business. Now, however, there is an opportunity through physician engagement — whether with employed or independent physician — to improve patient access, customer service, quality and costs.

> It's not enough to measure engagement—you need to use that data to improve it.

> Physician engagement is a critical success factor for hospitals and health networks navigating delivery system transformation.

> As health systems progress towards new care and payment models, the key to success is physician engagement, and it must be cultivated

> Physician Engagement is a critical driver in the implementation of any proven practice and an essential ingredient in sustaining a culture that is patient centered.

Unfortunately engagement has gotten a bad name with many physicians because many healthcare executives have equated engagement with alignment and in some cases, the willingness to “get in line and follow orders.” Many interpret engagement as economically tying behavior to financial rewards (the carrot and the stick). As mentioned earlier, much discussion about physician engagement rests on the perception that physicians are not engaged – but this viewpoint is from the perspective of being engaged in the strategies and plans of health care organizations.

(This newsletter is dedicated to helping healthcare leaders, physicians and non-physicians, enhance physician engagement. Each edition will explore specifics and tactics and issues. Much of it is based upon the two Health Administration Press books, Enhanced Physician Engagement, Volume 1: What It Is, Why You Need It, and Where to Begin, and Enhanced Physician Engagement, Volume 2: Tools and Tactics for Success, both edited by Carson F. Dye, FACHE)