Physicians and their teams are navigating an increasingly complex healthcare system, all the while juggling the wide array of priorities in their day-to-day patient care.
One of the biggest challenges for physicians is striking the balance between innovation and cost, Michael Anderson, MD, a pediatrician and co-executive director of the WittKieffer’s Physician Leadership Institute, told Becker’s.
“It’s such a delicate line to walk, a tough line to walk, because on the one hand, medicine is a business,” he said. “You can’t do things in your institution to drive it out of business like that. We just can’t afford that as a healthcare system. I think more and more physicians understand that we’ve got to generate a margin, we have to control costs, we have to be efficient stewards of our resources.”
This is something that has changed over time, Dr. Anderson added, as the country’s healthcare system has grown and expanded, requiring physicians to be more knowledgeable about “the business of healthcare.”
As physicians work to build this knowledge base, establishing communication and coordination across clinical, administrative and financial leadership is paramount to success.
“When we go to an institution to try and help and support them to grow and develop, we will often say, ‘Hey, bring us five physicians that would benefit from coaching and team development and learning.’ But you can’t do that in a vacuum,” Dr. Anderson said.
A recent survey commissioned by Jackson Physician Search and Kirby Bates Associates found a growing adoption of “triad” leadership models across healthcare organizations — a structural strategy for breaking the usual barriers that separate clinical and administrative teams.
“A true triad model leadership was new to me when I came to CommonSpirit, and the triad model is basically the [chief nursing officer], the [chief medical officer] and the CEO,” Kristen Mascotti, MD, CMO of Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Penrose Hospital and market CMO of Greater Colorado and Kansas for the Mountain Region of Chicago-based CommonSpirit, told Becker’s.
She added that “the power of the triad relationship is it really does blend the clinical voice with the administrative operations to reduce silos and drive team engagement.”
Dr. Anderson echoed the necessity of collaboration across teams as U.S. healthcare evolves to meet the shifting demands for healthcare services among its population.
“Bring those dyads together to learn together, to grow together,” he said. “Don’t do this in isolation. I think institutions that really haven’t adopted a strong dyad model in their institution are going to suffer because you need both sides of that coin for the place to be efficient.”
When functioning under a dyad or triad leadership structure, workers gain the opportunity to complement one another’s strengths, rather than operate individually.
“When we need to seek each other’s guidance, then we also know our synergies,” Dr. Mascotti said. “That’s where we can really create transformative change quickly.”
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