BOSTON — Some medical practices, both large and small, just have an air of positivity. They convey a sense of "charisma" and have physicians and staff who are generally happy and engaged. And they're profitable.
Other practices lean the opposite way. They're squeaking by each month to pay the bills, have high staff turnover, and their physicians feel as though they're battling a daily grind.
Why the big disparity? Sometimes there are external factors that wield a huge influence: patient population, geographic location, perhaps a very popular physician. But in many cases, success has more to do with how a practice is being run.
Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) surveyed 676 group practices that were considered "better performers" in such areas as operations, productivity, profitability, and value. The findings revealed that certain factors are typically found in more successful practices.
In an interview here at the MGMA 2018 annual conference this week, Halee Fischer-Wright, MD, CEO of MGMA and a pediatrician in Denver, Colorado, gave some unique insights into the results. Of note, even though the measures of success focused on profitability and operations, physicians in those practices tended to experience greater satisfaction in their work, says Fischer-Wright.
"One finding was that in practices where the physicians are more satisfied, a large part of that had to do with the culture," says Fischer-Wright. "In a higher-satisfaction-practice culture, physicians and providers all the way down the line are fully engaged in their work and also have a feeling of autonomy."
Halee Fischer-Wright, MD
"The culture piece becomes as important as the traditional operations measures," she says. "In practices with great cultures, the practice is charismatic. You want to be in the practice; you want to be a patient there; you want to work there," she says. "It wins awards." By contrast, she notes, in a practice in a poor or troubled culture, there's unhappiness, a higher turnover rate, second-rate patient experience, and even more expense.
"Culture makes a huge difference," says Fischer-Wright. "In a medical practice, unlike when working in a hospital, the practice can look at and decide what they actually want for this practice. Is it low turnover? More money? Satisfaction among the clinicians? Then they can work to make that happen."
A key ingredient of many practices' success is teamwork, says Fischer-Wright. And yet teamwork is typically not taught in medical school.
"As we were becoming doctors, nowhere along the line was there a place where we had to ask, 'How can I work with someone else to do this better?'" says Fischer-Wright. "We are not in an industry where we learned the values of working in teams."
Medscape Medical News © 2018 WebMD, LLC
Any views expressed above are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of WebMD or Medscape.
Cite this: Leslie Kane. 8 Traits of a Successful Medical Practice: MGMA 2018 - Medscape - Oct 03, 2018.
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