Your group has held the exclusive contract for your specialty services, for example anesthesiology or radiology, for decades, but now the hospital is holding an RFP.
The competitors include the several national and regional management company groups, whose representatives, dressed in the uniforms actually considered the power costume by hospital administrators, well tailored suits not scrubs and lab coats, are scouring the hospital interviewing administrators, managers and the physicians who have, up until now, referred their patients to you.
You’ve had years to do the same: to create an experience monopoly – yet if you’re like most groups you haven’t and now you are witnessing a crash course. The price of admission might just be your career.
Of course, those “suits” don’t deliver patient care, even if they once did. They are all sizzle and no steak. The problem is, administrators like sizzle.
In the long run, the sizzle is seen for what it is, sound and smoke, and when it clears away and patient care is at stake, administrator heads often roll. That might just be cold consolation for you, as by then you will probably be long gone.
The solution is to deliver both the steak and the sizzle. You’re in the kitchen right now. Get cooking.