Many physicians, even physician group leaders, have trouble with the notion of transformational change because today’s payor and hospital centric status quo is their “normal.”
As a result, they’re consistently playing defense: rolling with the punches and hoping to survive.
On the other hand, the opposition, the payors who will join the government’s ACO bandwagon to cram lower reimbursement down physicians’ throats, the hospitals who are jockeying to put themselves in the position of doing the cramming, and the so-called national groups which are negligently, or in some cases, intentionally, helping to transition medicine from private practice to hospital controlled models, is highly organized.
I’m no psychologist, but it appears as if for many physicians there is a self-esteem problem combined with the harkening back to memories of prior transitions to new experiences. Yes, this may be highly irrational, but remember what it was like moving to a new neighborhood, attending a new school, or your first day of residency — every change, even a positive one, brought with it either some anxiety or a flood of new experience that was, even if exhilarating, exhausting. And, for course, there is the uncertainty as to whether the new situation will be as favorable to you as the present. But you survived and, in many cases, thrived.
One thing is for certain and that is that unless physicians and physician groups evolve and take an aggressively proactive stance in constructing their future, the healthcare economy will take care of the evolving for you.
This requires a different mindset than the one that has gotten you to where you are today.
