The COVID-19 pandemic is unlike anything most Americans can recall in their lifetimes. Despite virus containment and financial relief efforts, it is having far-reaching effects on our nation and industry that likely won’t dissipate quickly, even once we are ‘out of the woods.’
One of the trends the health care industry may see emerging from this is hospitals employing physicians rather than outsourcing them. While this trend is not a new one, it may become more significant to hospitals given the financial and operational challenges that they’ve already faced during COVID-19. This employment strategy can secure significant cost savings, volume increases, and goal alignment—but only if done correctly.
To prepare for the likely incline of the employed provider trend, SCP Health is sharing six tips for effective practice management:
- Get your entire hospital management and provider team unified around the plan for transitioning the newly employed practice into your operations—cutting out disjointed efforts.
- Build a strong cultural foundation on true understanding of the needs, interests, and goals of both your facility/system and your providers.
- Define what you expect of your providers and clearly communicate those expectations.
- Focus on what you can do to impact provider performance, productivity, and overall program performance—including creating interactive dialogue opportunities, adopting forward-thinking approaches to the composition and collaboration of your clinical teams, and capturing the right data to influence decision-making.
- Within all your initiatives, keep these three critical success factors in mind:
- Do you have strong leadership and communication?
- Are you financially aligned with clinicians and medical leadership?
- Have you invested in the right reporting and management tools?
- Consider seeking out an experienced health care practice management partner who will work closely alongside you to understand your culture and exceed your goals. While some organizations have successfully kept provider management and performance improvement efforts inhouse, it often doesn’t make sense to take on the weighty administrative burden that comes with employing more providers.
To learn more about how to be successful at clinician practice management, read our white paper, Protecting Your Investment in Employed Providers. We also held a subsequent webinar that you can watch here.
If you’re interested in working with an experienced physician practice management partner, contact SCP Health to get a conversation started.
