Even in a Year Like This ... Physician Wellness Leaders are More Important than Ever ... here's why ...

We are nowhere near the end of the human suffering and massive economic impact of the pandemic of 2020.

The Old Normal is gone. It is all hands on deck - as you treat COVID-19 patients directly or are working to ramp your practice back up again. 

The New Normal has yet to emerge from the whirlwind.

And I keep getting the same answer to this question from everyone I meet.

"Do you think when this is all over and a Post-Covid healthcare delivery system reassembles itself ...
that the health and wellbeing of the physicians and staff
will be MORE or LESS Important going forward?"

Now is the time to get the skills and support to be an effective Wellness Champion. 

I am convinced the organizations who take the best care of their people will be the winners in a Post-Covid world. And I know you want to play a role in the physician wellness movement. 

Let us teach you a proven set of skills for wellness at three levels: for yourself, your teams and your entire organization. When the dust settles, you can lay down a coordinated Wellness Strategy for your people. 

The Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat is Live and In Person in Seattle, September 24 - 27.

BUT YOU ARE NOT REGISTERED YET !

As the layers of chaos and disruption march through this summer of 2020, you have a choice on where you focus your attention.

You could play defense -- hunker down, wait for a light at the end of the tunnel, pray for a rescue, hope for the best. If that's what you choose, inevitably someone else will draw up your new job description in the wake of the pandemic and tell you what to do - once again. 

Did you know that your emotional responses to disaster have a known structure and a logical order you will find comforting?

I knew about the symptoms of physician burnout, Kubler-Ross and her stages, even stages of quitting smoking, but until today I had never been introduced to Zunin and Myers and the 6 Stages of Normal Human Emotional Response to Disaster.

This is a fascinating progression and strikes true for my experience of 2020 so far. These stages are intertwined with physician burnout, PTSD and so many other normal and abnormal psychological responses to difficulty and struggle.

If you are also new to this work, I encourage you to invest a few minutes here to learn more. I have asked several dozen doctors if they have heard of this work before. None have said yes.

If you are like me, you will recognize these stages in your own life and have a framework for understanding the emotional echos of disaster in yourself, your colleagues and patients going forward.

=====================
Pandemic Survival Guide
New Online Training for Physicians
5 Skills to Deal With All 13 Layers of COVID-19 Impact
Learn More and Get Started Now
=====================

Let's look at the graph first and then run through the phases one-by-one.

And get ready to run like never before 

If you haven't heard yet, your organization just had its worst three months in history -- yet another COVID-19 driven contribution to physician burnout.

i) If you are a practice owner, this reality has been keeping you up at night for weeks.

ii) If you are an employee physician and you don't already know about the smoking crater that is your organization's financial statement, your leaders are hiding the financials from you in a fine example of #badleadership.

iii) And if your organization somehow managed to avoid a massive loss in the last 90 days - either you are a full risk/capitated provider (Kaiser Permanente) or you got very, very lucky.

For healthcare delivery organizations relying on fee-for-service payment contracts, things have never been this bad.

Their profit margin just went from single digit positive to a giant sucking sound. Even the Mayo Clinic is projecting a 3 BILLION dollar loss in 2020.

==========
This is Blog Post #335
Complete Blog Library  is Here
==========

Now we have some potential GOOD NEWS !

Now we are seeing a little flicker of light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. 

As we begin to reopen society, data released this week shows physician visit volumes have rebounded slightly from the bottom out in the month of April.

The burning question is will the recovery happen quickly enough to avoid an extinction event in smaller private practices?

Fee for service private practice has been hammered by declines of visit volumes of 50 - 70%. No business can withstand an assault on its top line income of this magnitude for any significant period of time.

New research shows outpatient visits appear to have bottomed out in early April and are on the rebound. The curve is upward with volumes still 30-40% below baseline volumes from January and February of this year.

Given the US healthcare system's addiction to fee for service payments, the recovery in visit volumes and income must come quickly.

If the curve does not quickly assume a V or U shape, smaller physician owned groups who cannot survived a prolonged income drop will go out of business en masse before the end of the year. Unfortunately that does not look like a U or V to me. 

Here is the latest data on US Visit volumes from a unique source that tells the whole story.

I have talked to hundreds of physicians in the last six weeks and two things are consistent.

1) Everyone knows the Old Normal is gone. There is no going back.

Once we get through the infectious disease crisis, round two of COVID-19 is the economic impact on your organization. Can you be certain at all what your practice will look like this time next year?

2) AND YET ... Most doctors don't want the Old Normal back again in the first place. 

No one is longing for a return of the good old days of EMR overwhelm, the fee-for-service hamster wheel, Pajama Time documentation at home and burnout rates of 50% and more. Who wants that back again? Isn't there a better way?

Isn't there a way to practice your craft as a helper, healer, caregiver and Lightworker without so much waste and brain damage??

The answer is YES - we know it to be true. And yet, the New Normal is completely unclear at this time. There is a chasm to cross.

As healthcare workers, we learn, "the patient comes first" as our Prime Directive.

Tragically, this reflex impulse to dive in and help without thinking, can get us killed - especially here in the Covid19 Pandemic.

We tend to dive in where the need is the greatest, never questioning our “the patient comes first” programming.

So for instance,

• as a health care worker
• if you see somebody down
• who's not breathing and they don't have a heartbeat
• you're gonna probably jump on them and resuscitate them.
• It is a reflex action
• We don’t even think about it under normal circumstances.
  

These are not normal circumstances. Stop for just a second.

There is a huge and necessary barrier between COVID-19 patients and their caregivers - Personal Protective Equipment - PPE

The mask, face shield, gown and gloves are completely necessary to protect the caregiver and the other patients on the ward AND they block a powerful component of a therapeutic relationship ... seeing the faces of your care team.

No smiles, frowns, looks of empathy or concern except what words and the corners of the eyes can convey ... and that is if the light is not reflecting off your visor at the time.

What can be done to humanize this life saving connection between caregiver and patient?

Here are two things:

• The PPE Project
• The Selfie Mask Generator

Lightworker Forum Resources Page - Crowd-sourced from our Weekend Lightworker Forum Mastermind Calls 

COVID-19 is a Worthy Adversary - We count 13 Layers of Impact that will spool out over time.

VIDEO TRAINING:

It is easy to focus on the impact of the acute disease and the early economic effects, but just wait, there is more.

Those are just two of the 13 separate layers of negative impact from this crisis. The long tail of the pandemic's impact will last several years at a minimum and only if there is no wave two - please!