How to be a value driven physician

In his book and accompanying video series, Donald Miller offers his advice on how to be a value-driven professional.

Ten character traits and 10 skills distinguish valuable professionals. You can take action to develop these pivotal skills.

Good character is a fundamental characteristic for a successful life?–?including life at?work.?For value-driven professionals, character includes 10 important traits:?

1. You see yourself as?a good investment for an employer and as an economic product within that framework.
2. You act as a proactive hero rather than a reactive victim.
3. You know how to?reduce the degree of drama in any situation.
4. You welcome and learn from feedback.
5. You appreciate productive conflict and use it to improve a situation.
6. You would rather gain trust?than have others like you;?you use clear expectations, accountability and rewards to earn that trust.
7. You don’t only generate ideas, you act on them.
8. You invite clarity rather than using confusion as an excuse for not acting.
9. You risk failure, but remain a relentless optimist about success.
10. You use challenges, obstacles, efforts, criticism and other people’s?success as opportunities to grow.

Value based care is gradually replacing fee for service care. Unfortunately, physicians are not taught how to create value during their formal training.

Attend any healthcare conference and you’ll quickly discover that it’s become downright fashionable for healthcare leaders to talk about their unwavering commitment to “value-based care.”

The expression has become ubiquitous in healthcare circles. Its virtuousness goes unchallenged.

Now AI has been thrown into the mix. The rise of AI presents an opportunity for humans to step up to the challenge of refining, emphasizing, and applying our own human strengths to differentiate corporate decision-making. However, human capabilities, like making moral judgments, and using imagination or intuition, are often untrained, impulsive, or implicit. Thus, to distinguish and elevate their decision-making processes, organizations need to actively codify and foster the requisite human decision-making skills. This article outline five imperatives towards this end.

But should unquestionably accepting value-based care be the case? Whose value and what are the predictable and unintended consequences when the business of medicine conflicts with the ethos of the practice of medicine?

Value-based care is a term that Medicare, doctors and other health care professionals sometimes use to describe health care that is designed to focus on quality of care, provider performance and the patient experience. The “value” in value-based care refers to what an individual values most.

It is usually measured by quality of care or some other value factor/price.

In value-based care, doctors and other health care providers work together to manage a person’s overall health, while considering an individual’s personal health goals. For example, doctors might coordinate an individual’s blood work so that they only need to go into the clinic once. This approach to care also can help people avoid the emergency department and keep them out of the hospital.

So, what does it take to be a value-driven physician?

1. Know the meaning of value
2. Learn how to sell it
3. Price it accordingly
4. Develop the competencies to create value
5. Primarily be a problem seeker, not a problem solver
6. Be a value driven intrapreneur if you are an employed physician
7. Be a value driven private practice entrepreneur
8. Augment your clinical mindset with an entrepreneurial mindset
9. Find, define, and use your own values
10. Create a career development and transitioning plan
11. How to be a physician entrepreneur despite your MBA
12. Sell to the heart, not the brain
13. Create side hustle value
14. Be a doer with a twist
15. How to build your valuable personal brand

Not teaching doctors how to create patient centered value is, at best, cruel and unusual punishment. At worst, it is educational malpractice.

These are difficult times. Be the solution.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack