Helping in new clinical settings over the past year, I find these core features in great clinics and hospital departments.
Outstanding clinics:
1. Remember Their Core Motivation
Most of us run from task to task without asking why. At some point, we chose to do what we are doing right now. Even with years of training, people don’t have to keep providing patient care; they could look elsewhere.
People need help to remember why they do what they do, and why they work in a particular place.
Most people who work in healthcare applied from a desire to help people. They looked for specific jobs that allowed them to help and serve patients.
Outstanding clinical groups never forget that serving patients comes before anything else.
2. Support Their Core Business
Especially in large groups, staff might think the clinic or hospital pays them. In a sense, that’s true, but also very wrong. Every business gets paid for doing something.
Although revenue flows through the clinic before it gets to the staff, employees must know that the clinic stays open if physicians see patients. Anything that slows, or stops physicians seeing patients results in poor patient service and less revenue.
Great clinics keep physicians working at what physicians do best: seeing patients.
3. Think About Governance
Governance refers to how organizations are governed and controlled, how decisions get made, and how decision-making units fit together. A solo physician deals with everything, or delegates to an office manager.
Problems arise as clinics grow. At some point, groups need to think about a formal, simple governance structure. Communication, authority, and accountability must flow in a line through the structure. If structure gets ignored and leaders start talking like customers expecting to be heard like owners, chaos ensues. (Check out: The Imperfect Board Member)
High performing clinics have an explicit governance structure that everyone follows.
4. Manage Performance
Once everyone remembers why they are there, knows how the clinic earns income, and understands how decisions are made, staff needs support to perform well. With clear expectations, most staff members excel; some do not. Even in a small group, staff needs performance reviews, incentives to improve, rewards for excellence, and follow-up on underperformance.
Outstanding clinics measure performance using explicit criteria supported by everyone. When members do not perform well after attempts to help them change, great clinics help low performers find work elsewhere.
Final Thought
Oppressive workplaces leave you emotionally exhausted at the end of a day, fill you with dread at going to work, and require you to tiptoe around icy colleagues. Dennis Bakke wrote bestseller Joy at Work suggesting that we embrace human values as ends in themselves, not just means to business ends.
Outstanding clinics foster uplifting, healing work environments.