There’s no doubt about it—the healthcare industry needs a makeover. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and other leaders in the healthcare realm have developed a handful of models that could hold some promise for reducing healthcare costs and improving the quality of healthcare for...
My first consulting assignment involved a surgeon on a small medical staff with chronic depression. He would experience meltdowns in the middle of the night when nurses attempted to rouse him from a fitful sleep. On two occasions he slammed down the phone after being asked to...
For more than two decades, there has been a theme emerging as physician leaders face the challenge presented by divergent practices in reimbursement: Misaligned incentives seems to be the diagnosis.
Pressure continues to mount on hospitals to improve their patient satisfaction scores, particularly through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey, or...
Hospital leaders wouldn't think to ask a private practice physician to work in the hallway—an office is non-negotiable. Yet, hospitals frequently ask hospitalists to do just that. Anecdotal evidence suggests that few hospitals have allotted appropriate office space for hospitalist...
Many hospitalists will tell you that one of the reasons they choose to practice hospital-based medicine is because it offers greater scheduling flexibility than office-based practice. But many will also tell you, often in the same breath, that they are exhausted. Going to bed earlier isn’t the...
Since the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced in October 2009 that it will no longer pay for inpatient or outpatient consultation codes starting in January, the hospitalist community has been aflutter with questions. One of the biggest questions is whether the coding...
For many physicians, taking the time to perform a thorough and effective hand off is a chore they know they should do, but culture and logistics often get in the way.
Communication is the glue that holds an organization together. According to Peter Drucker, a leading expert in organizational leadership, during times of change, leaders' efforts at communication should triple. And we are definitely living through a period of unprecedented change in healthcare.
Stakes are high, opinions are divided, and emotions are charged. You are under pressure, possibly stumped, full of adrenaline. Welcome to the world of deeply human conversations as outlined in the seminal work Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al ...