Physician Engagement is not One-Size-Fits-All

Physician alignment is vital to driving the changes necessary in our shifting healthcare environment. On the hospital side, physicians are the front-line experts needed to increase quality and decrease cost. It’s impossible for a hospital system to take on important projects like fall prevention, unnecessary test utilization and standardization of best practices without leadership and participation from doctors. On the physician side, those of us who refuse to take a seat at the table risk giving up vital decision making to bureaucrats and politicians.

It’s no surprise that physician engagement is a hot topic right now. Many hospital executives are looking for the magic formula to garner participation from their medical staff, while physicians who play a dual role as administrators often struggle to bring their clinical colleagues on board. I’ve heard lots of ideas tossed around, but part of the challenge is trying to engage a heterogeneous population of physicians with different goals, needs and history.

Is there a one-size fits all strategy for physician engagement? My answer is a resounding no.

Physicians can be subcategorized in many ways – by specialty, private practice, academic, employed, large community, small community, etc., and this is only the tip of the iceberg. Things that serve as strong motivators for a private practice infectious disease doc who has privileges in several small community hospitals are likely far different than those of an academic anesthesiologist who is an assistant professor on a tenure-track.

Then there are the generational differences I hear physicians talking about more and more. First off, I’ll start by asking – when has there ever been an older generation that didn’t comment on the younger generation being unsettlingly different? Never. New generations of physicians aren’t lazy. They did not create the 80-hour work week requirements. Do they have different priorities than previous generations? Probably. Did the last generation of physicians have different priorities than the one before it? Probably.

The bottom line is that we have to use not only broad commonalities to engage physicians (like shared purpose, pride in our profession, etc.), but also well-thought-out strategies to target different types of physicians. Maybe evening staff meetings don’t work as well for physicians with young families and working spouses. Some physicians may prefer interacting on social media versus face-to-face. A hospital-based meeting may not work for private practice primary care physicians who would prefer to meet closer to their own clinic.

It’s time to change our mindset from focusing on why physicians are different to how to accommodate those differences when designing a physician engagement strategy.