Highly successful medical groups operate in concert with bureaucratic hospitals but avoid the taint of bureaucracy themselves.
Tag: medical groups
What do you know, really know, about the people you do business with? For example, about your employees, subcontractors and the CEOs of the hospitals you deal with. A few years ago a friend, let’s call him “C,” told me the following story: C’s son, attending college in the East, was looking for a new […]
There’s little question that most, if not all, medical groups should be led by practicing physicians. The problem is that too many groups create policies, either formal or informal, that actually dissuade and hinder the ability of physician leaders to lead. Specifically, I’m talking about the fact that groups tend to put far too much […]
The bizarre story of the JetBlue flight attendant who, after an altercation with a passenger, made a profanity-laden speech over the plane’s intercom, grabbed beer from the galley, opened the plane’s door and slid down the emergency evacuation chute, just got even more strange: He’s become a web sensation, lauded by other self-absorbed losers for his […]
ObamaCare has made it harder than it was before for physicians to own hospitals participating in federal healthcare programs. One option of course, open for as long as there is still private health insurance coverage, is for physicians interested in hospital ownership to own facilities that exclude federally funded patients. The other, and perhaps superior […]
Disraeli commented that there are lies, damned lies and statistics. It’s time to add acronyms to the list. A new acronym to save healthcare has arrived, the ACO, an “accountable care organization.” But accountability to whom? And for what care, exactly? Lastly, and most importantly, who runs the organization? An ACO, is about power and […]
Just because your hospital based group operates within the bureaucratic world of the hospital does not mean that it must be bureaucratic itself. The trick is to operate an entrepreneurial entity partly within those bureaucratic bounds. I say “partly within” because the most successful groups move outward from there. It’s sometimes difficult for group leaders to […]
Saying that you’ll consider the issues (or do the planning, or consider the options, or… “when negotiation with the hospital begins” misses the point entirely. The negotiation has already begun, you just don’t know it. It’s exactly on point with the observation about being at a poker table: “If you don’t know who the patsy is, […]
Customers — my clients generally refer to them as patients, but that doesn’t make any difference — expect service. You might provide them with the world’s best medical care, but if you piss them off they probably won’t be back, and they will probably let others know about it. If you piss them off before they […]
I recently read a review in a magazine for consultants of a new book by an “expert” who advises that since business today moves at the speed of light, the “old” strategic question of “where do you want to be X years from now?” must now be “where do you want to be a few days from now?” What total B.S.!
