Physician Leadership: A Critical Success Factor

The importance of strong leadership, including that of physicians, is being expressed by a myriad of people as perhaps the most important critical factor for success in healthcare in the future. As an example, on just one day last week, 10 emails crossed my desktop regarding some aspect of leadership. One addressed a new book published by the AHA on Influential Leadership and another spoke of a USC Professor who has been added to the faculty of the American College of Physician Executive’s physician leadership course.

In addition, I have been recently asked to author a chapter of an upcoming book on leadership, specifically focusing on the question…..Does a good clinical physician have the competencies to be a good physician leader?
So why all the increased attention on the importance of leadership, especially for physicians?

·     First, and foremost, there is increased recognition that the healthcare delivery process in all of its settings is getting increasingly complex by the day. Not only the Federal governmental changes driven by healthcare reform, but also the State budgetary crises are causing significant reductions in reimbursements for both heath systems, single hospitals, and physicians.

·     Second, volumes on both the inpatient and outpatients lines of service have declined due to the economic crisis and will not be rebounding to former levels for a multiplicity of reasons.

·    Third, cost reductions in both the labor and supply areas, are never easy and require strong leadership to not only implement, but even stronger communication skills to engender the support needed to sustain the gains.

·     Forth, evidenced-based medical protocols, driven by electronic data bases, must be instituted quickly and will require strong partnerships with physicians in order to implement these drivers of high quality and affordable cost outcomes.

·    Fifth, the Board of hospitals and health systems have developed a higher level of accountability for the CEO and his/her executive team due to the concerns these complexities are raising to the level of governance. They are requiring the teams to develop annual goals driven by metrics which stretch their performance trends positively, monitored through an annual performance evaluation process.

For all these reasons, all physicians, other providers, and support staffs must embrace in a committed fashion the changes necessary to address all the complexities outlined above, Leaders most not only communicate effectively the rationale for these changes, but must instill in each member of the team the desire to make the changes necessary for success. It would seem that strong physician leaders speaking to other physicians and providers would hopefully accelerate this process and create an increased passion on the team for doing what is necessary to provide excellent care each and every day to all they touch!

In the end, then, each leader must make sure that he or she has the competencies required to be successful not only today, but for the future that is evolving. This requires a commitment to personal reflection and self-evaluations, as well as, to a life-long learning process to acquire or strengthen the skills which have been identified to be deficient.