Accelerate Your Physician Engagement Efforts with These 6 Steps

Many hospital leaders connect with physicians during MEC or Medical Staff Meetings, but these follow a formal agenda. I prefer less formal interactions, such as structured rounding programs or physician engagement breakfasts with my C-suite. These practices foster meaningful conversations about quality, safety, physician satisfaction, and service line development. Additionally, they improve communication, build trust, and help me identify potential future medical staff leaders.

Whether you are capturing pain points from satisfaction survey data, conversations with your medical directors, or reports documented by your outreach team, it’s important to find a way to consistently document and triage issues in a way that allows you to offer a solution or response in a timely manner. This approach to managing the feedback loop can go a long way in helping healthcare leaders build trust with physician partners.

Many hospital leaders are engaged in initiatives impacted by physician decisions. I’ve found that physicians view hospitals as vital partners in patient care and want the organization to succeed. When driving change or implementing new initiatives, many support the effort if they understand the need and can share their perspectives. To gain buy-in, I have conducted fact-finding conversations with medical staff leaders and identified physician champions. I’ve also utilized formal structures like a Physician Advisory Group or Joint Operating Committee to gather support.

In my 1st hospital role, physicians often met up for lunch in our physicians’ lounge or chatted for a minute when passing one another in the doctor’s parking lot as our main means of physician engagement. With the emergence of hospitalist programs and other changes to the typical private practice model, these exchanges have become less common in most healthcare organizations. Designing opportunities to facilitate these exchanges among your medical community can go a long way in building and reinforcing your medical network. Some examples I have used in the past include social events, CME programming, and regional medical summits built around a specific diagnosis group. 1 of the most effective resources I have seen hospitals and large practices use to build collegiality is dedicating an advocate, like a physician liaison, to facilitating relationships between providers.

Just like hospital leaders, physicians are impacted by the ever-changing nature of healthcare. In many cases, their medical training doesn’t expose them to the health system knowledge needed to fully understand how population health, different payment models, and other changes in the industry may impact their practice. There are other areas of personal and professional development that may help physicians better lead patient care and create more stable medical practices. Part of physician engagement involves understanding where physicians may need guidance and identifying opportunities to offer support. Many organizations do this by creating mentoring programs for their new providers as well as launching in-person or online physician leadership training.