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Leadership Concepts for Physicians and Healthcare CXOs

By Dr. David Edward Marcinko MBA

[Editor-in-Chief]

The toughest part of implementing any medical quality improvement program is changing the healthcare organization’s culture. The physician-executive or chief executive officer must be committed to change, not just give lip service to it. The core to TQM or, for that matter, any of the several new popular quality programs, like six-sigma, is the buy-in of senior management to change the culture of the practice organization to support the individual’s pursuit of quality.

Re-Frame the Situation

The cultural change requires a complete reorientation of job descriptions and duties. It requires a collaborative rather than an adversarial work force. The phrase, “it’s not my job,” cannot work in a quality healthcare environment. Medical quality programs cannot work where employees refuse to be “their brothers’ keepers.” This collaborative working system is difficult to implement, but not impossible to achieve. It involves certain basic changes to the traditional American work ethic of “rugged individualism.” It suggests that the individual employee must become a partner in the healthcare enterprise and be just as concerned about quality as the CEO. Quality really does become everybody’s business.

Assessment

Quality requires new thinking about the relationships that have traditionally existed between labor [nurses, therapists, assistants, and aides, etc] and management [physician-owner, CEO, clinic administrator, managers, etc]. It requires a new direction; a new partnership must be forged between management and the clinical floor, between management and administrative staff, and between line and staff management.

Conclusion

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Filed under: "Doctors Only", Career Development, Ethics, Practice Management, Quality Initiatives | Tagged: corporate culture, leadership, medical culture, medical quality improvement, organizational behavior | 8 Comments »