Patient Satisfaction should NEVER be 100%

Patient Satisfaction - or the "Patient Experience" is a key quality indicator for organizations and a potential bonus point for the individual physician.

One of the key causes of the modern Physician Burnout epidemic is the state of leadership in healthcare

Let's face it, large organizations that employ hundreds of physicians are a new development in the healthcare industry. The consolidation in healthcare continues, forming larger and larger companies, while the on-the-job-quality of life for the workers continues to deteriorate. 

Over and over again leaders emphasize numbers over mission, meaning, and culture of the group. Add COVID into the mix and it really is a perfect storm. 

• Where did this go off the rails?
• Where can we find new attitudes and new skills to build a healthy healthcare workplace.

In this video Simon Sinek will show you lessons he learned from the Navy Seals that can help all leaders in healthcare.

Lessons about TRUST / PERFORMANCE / TOXIC CULTURES / SOFT SKILLS / THE PETER PRINCIPLE and #PhysicianLeadership.

Check it out and PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.

Physician leaders understand COVID-19 is a unique type of disaster.

Instead of a POINT crisis and a recovery; like a 

• Tornado / Hurricane
• Flood
• Terrorist attack

... where you get a KaBoom, an acute crisis and a recovery over days to weeks. You know, the kinds of disasters we have drills for, the ones we have code names for.

This pandemic is a series of slow tidal waves, overwhelming everything and everyone for weeks at a time as the wave hits, only to return months later and do it again. 

Sheer fatigue, exhaustion, even a sense of helplessness and hopelessness are common for you and your care team. 

All of us can rally and unite in response to an acute crisis. All hands on deck!

But how do you continue to lead and remain a high performance team for weeks and months on end when the tide of illness refuses to recede?

These 3 Questions for Senior Healthcare Leaders will reveal their opinions on the importance of Physician Wellbeing.

Sometimes it is darn difficult to tell whether your leaders understand and/or care about the stresses you are under.

• The impact of COVID-19 - either blowing up or shutting down your practice.
• The pandemic induced losses of 2020 Q2 forcing you to take a pay cut and laying off your essential support staff.
• The daily death by a thousand EMR clicks and keystrokes.
• The weekly struggle to carve out some meaning from your practice whirlwind and build in some family time and life balance. 

If you can catch your CMO or CEO in a quiet moment, here are three questions that will reveal how they view your professional quality of life.

When the battle against the virus is raging in the ER and the ICU ...

It's all hands on deck
All power to the shields
Throw everything you've got to the front lines

And rightfully so.

That is not enough!

Staffing and supporting the front line care teams is job #1 everywhere and
we can't forget the members of those care teams who are not here today. 

I am not talking about the workers who are simply off shift right now. Let me show you this physician leadership blind spot.

Physician Leadership - Trust vs. Performance on your Teams

Looking to build a high performing team?
Will it have physicians on it?
Let me show you a simple way to build a better team and understand the team's performance - good, bad and ugly.

Here is a video by leadership expert Simon Sinek that reveals how a military elite team picks its members - the Navy Seals. I believe the simple two-part lesson in this video is key to understanding physician behavior on teams as well. 

He asked the question:

"How do you choose people that go on Seal Team 6?"

Let me show you a classic bean counter leadership delusion that is already increasing front-line physician burnout here in the USA.

The Sine Wave Delusion happens when a physician leader does not understand patient care and assumes financial losses can be made up easily if we just spin the doctor hamster wheels faster. 

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.

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This is Blog Post #335
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Now we have some potential GOOD NEWS !

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

Attention Senior Healthcare Leaders - your personal leadership response to this COVID-19 crisis will lock in the culture of your teams for the next 5 years.

• The tail is long
• The time for leadership is now
• How are you showing up?

When the pandemic forces your people to strap on their PPE for each shift, putting themselves at daily risk in order to serve the sick and dying - they are watching for any signs that someone has their back. 

If we polled them ...
... how do you think your people would rate the quality of your crisis leadership, on a 0 -10 scale?