Physicians as Change Agents: Rethinking Leadership in Healthcare

Healthcare is a major, undeniable force in our society. We all want access to high quality healthcare when we need it, and we want it to cost less. That presents a significant moral and ethical dilemma when nearly every one of us has healthcare stocks in our retirement investment portfolio. Are better access and cheaper cost an unsolvable problem?

Physician Leadership Accelerator 

This past weekend, a cadre of physicians gathered in Minneapolis for the closing retreat of the Physician Leadership Accelerator program, presented by our firm Good Leadership. The participants were high-performing physicians from across the United States who are motivated to get more involved in shaping how their organizations deliver high quality care faster, easier, and cheaper.  

“One thing that hasn’t changed over the past 50 years in America is the fact that physicians are still respected and held in very high esteem,” Christopher Snowbeck, a Minnesota Star Tribune reporter who writes on the business of healthcare told the group Sunday morning. His point: to make meaningful progress on the unsolvable problem, physicians need to make time to be involved in the business decisions of healthcare. That means they have to be able to read financial statements, understand macro quality trends, how organizations work, and how to influence without authority – the main topics of the Accelerator program. 

Catalyzing Organizational Improvement 

The Physician Leadership Accelerator participants shared a 10-month development journey focused on Personal Leadership, Clinical Leadership, Business Leadership, and Organizational Leadership. Everything they heard, saw, and learned through retreats, executive coaching, and cohort-based webinars stimulated each physician to lead an organizational improvement project. They were challenged to make something important work, better, faster, and easier for patients and colleagues.  

“I expected my colleagues to push me away when I wanted to standardize some of the processes for how we purchase medical devices,” commented one of the physicians in the program. “What I found was mostly the opposite. They were feeling the same way and they appreciated how the change was being driven by a physician and not someone in finance.”  In less than one year, that program will save more than $2.5M and improve training consistency and clinical quality.  

To be honest – none of the participants believed they had the time to invest in their development in such an intense way. Physicians today are time-starved in ways most people can’t imagine. But somehow, they found a way: talking with their coach while driving, to waiting for a surgery to start. They did their homework on airplanes, halftime at soccer games, or listening to podcasts in traffic.  

“This was the best investment in myself I’ve had since residency,” one physician said while rushing out to catch an airplane home. “I’m motivated by the idea that I can be as respected in making decisions about how our practice functions as I can about how I treat my patients.” 

On behalf of society, we think that’s a good thing. 

For more information about the Physician Leadership Accelerator inquire here.