Physician Leadership Pipeline

Physicians are needed, but not represented, at every level of leadership in healthcare. As the levels broaden in scope, the skill sets differ and expand. Unfortunately, there is no pipeline to cultivate talent and develop these skills in physicians with leadership interest. It almost seems as if the system is uninterested or actively discouraging it. Too many patients yet to be seen and more RVU's to be made I suppose.

Classic case in point is academic medicine. It is assumed that research competency, publications, and grant totals translates to organizational expertise and managerial excellence, but this is often not the case.

What's needed is a real pipeline and training platform for physicians who want to broaden their work to include leadership and administrative duties.

Off the shelf leadership programs rarely work nor are relevant to physicians in the healthcare space. MD Hero by Manifest MD Consulting seeks to help fill that gap.

• Individual Practitioner - this is the vast majority of physicians. Technical skills are what matters
• MD Leader - Running a medical group, a service line, or administrative position in an academic medical center. EQ becomes important here.
• Market MD Leader - Here you are responsible for other MD's in a business region. Here you are often paired with a business executive. Financial acumen becomes particularly useful here
• Group MD Leader - Think faculty chief of a division in an academic medical center or chief medical officer (CMO). Strategic frameworks is critical to learn and leverage.
• Enterprise MD Leader - CEO. Here you have to determine how to factor the future oriented thinking into the operations and growth of your company.

It is important to not jump these levels too quickly. Plenty of physicians have promoted too quickly without the requisite skills , leading to costly errors, burnout, and disillusionment for other physicians trying to become enterprise oriented leaders. Even if you have these skills, leadership in healthcare is very difficult as we've seen. The industry is unique among all others.

The resignation of the former leader of MD Anderson and the collapse of Haven led by Atul Gawande, the joint outfit supported by Amazon, JP Morgan and Warrent Buffet are testament to this:

The "higher" you go, the more soft and hard skills you need:

• financial management and cost accounting
• influence and collaboration
• public speaking
• conflict resolution and diplomacy
• short and long term allocation of capital and other resources

This progression is predicated on self-management prior to managing others, businesses, groups and then the entire enterprise.

courtesy: four week MBA

How do you learn these skills? Formal degree programs are valuable but on the ground learning, peer feedback and learning from coaches and mentors is where real skills and insights develop.

courtesy: sketch bubble

A word of caution:

The trap for many physicians aspiring to higher levels of leadership is they are often seen as token appointments.

It's no surprise that physicians don't like to be led by non-physicians. Enterprise leaders know this so often appoint physicians to various fiefdoms in a payor or provider organizations, all while true decision making power and agenda setting is held elsewhere. You need to be savvy about this reality.

In most hospital and provider organizations, leadership is typically split in a "dyad model." The physician is paired with a business executive or practice manager or similar professional. Clinical duties are siphoned to the doctor whereas organizational tactics to the other individual.

This can work but the problem with this structure, as the authors outline, is that it doesn't actually train physicians to become self-sufficient leaders. They just hand off business and organizational tasks to other people and remain underdeveloped in these vital skills.

It's time you take the reigns.

Ignite your leadership,

Rusha p