And get ready to run like never before 

If you haven't heard yet, your organization just had its worst three months in history -- yet another COVID-19 driven contribution to physician burnout.

i) If you are a practice owner, this reality has been keeping you up at night for weeks.

ii) If you are an employee physician and you don't already know about the smoking crater that is your organization's financial statement, your leaders are hiding the financials from you in a fine example of #badleadership.

iii) And if your organization somehow managed to avoid a massive loss in the last 90 days - either you are a full risk/capitated provider (Kaiser Permanente) or you got very, very lucky.

For healthcare delivery organizations relying on fee-for-service payment contracts, things have never been this bad.

Their profit margin just went from single digit positive to a giant sucking sound. Even the Mayo Clinic is projecting a 3 BILLION dollar loss in 2020.

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This is Blog Post #335
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Now we have some potential GOOD NEWS !

Now we are seeing a little flicker of light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. 

Attention Senior Healthcare Leaders - your personal leadership response to this COVID-19 crisis will lock in the culture of your teams for the next 5 years.

• The tail is long
• The time for leadership is now
• How are you showing up?

When the pandemic forces your people to strap on their PPE for each shift, putting themselves at daily risk in order to serve the sick and dying - they are watching for any signs that someone has their back. 

If we polled them ...
... how do you think your people would rate the quality of your crisis leadership, on a 0 -10 scale?

The Training and Support to become an Effective Physician Wellness Champion

Our 2020 dates are set for both Spring and Fall deliveries of the Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat. Check your schedule now to see which date works for you.  

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Get Complete Retreat Details Here
Including How to SAVE $500 as an Early Bird
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If you are being called to lead the Physician Wellness movement, this unique training and comprehensive support system are keys to your effectiveness.

What would you say about an industry that reliably burns out half of their most valuable workers ...

• Workers that take over a decade to train
• Are the point of origin for 100% of gross revenue
• And for which there is already a massive shortage that will get much worse in the near future

This same industry clearly understands that physician burnout harms and kills patients and doctors and has a massive negative effect on the organization's bottom line.

What words are most appropriate to describe such insane behavior? [even Lemmings would appear to be more interested in their own survival]

Does the Healthcare Industry Exploit Doctors? 

Dr. Danielle Ofri - author of the book What Doctors Feel - wrote a groundbreaking piece in the New York Times this week entitled: The Business of Health Care Depends on Exploiting Doctors and Nurses

In the article she writes:
"Counting on nurses and doctors to suck it up because you know they won’t walk away from their patients is not just bad strategy. It’s bad medicine." 
We couldn't agree more.

Unfortunately, her article then crashes and burns in an impossible recommendation that half of all US Healthcare Administrators be fired, because:
"If we converted even half of those salary lines to additional nurses and doctors, we might have enough clinical staff members to handle the work."
Duh! AND I think we agree no organization is going to take her up on that change in business model. 

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Stop The Madness
Help Us Lead the Physician Wellness Movement
Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat
Get Complete Details at This Link
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In this post let me show you

• Why we agree with Dr. Ofri that physician exploitation is built into the industrial practice of medicine
  
  
• Some simple Case Study examples of exploitation from our thousands of hours of physician burnout coaching client files
  
  
• The Triple Competitive Advantage if your Leadership Team STOPS Exploiting the Doctors and begins to Practice the Quadruple Aim Instead

Chief Wellness Officer - CWO - does your organization need one?

It is all the rage in leadership circles these days. The mucky mucks are all in agreement. If your organization is serious about preventing burnout, the very first thing you need to do is appoint a Chief Wellness Officer - and watch the angry, dark clouds of burnout lift - revealing the rainbows and unicorns of a happy, healthy physician workforce.

This is Magical Thinking of the highest order

Let's drink the CWO KoolAide for just a moment ... to recognize it is just another version of checking a box.

This C-Suite executive will be your savior, your cavalry cresting the ridge, your knight in shining armor, your hero among the bean counters. At the very least, they should be able to stop the rest of the C-suite from hammering the doctors into little tiny pieces.

Would your people or your organization actually benefit from installing a Chief Wellness officer - CWO

The answer of course is "IT DEPENDS"
[ And for 99% of healthcare organizations a CWO is a distraction from building a wellness program in the first place ]

Round On Your People

It is as simple as that ... and here is the monumental tragedy of current healthcare leadership behavior.

I have asked thousands of physician leaders - both physicians and non-doctor senior leaders - if they schedule time to round on or shadow their people. Their response is always the same. Just yesterday in a room of 30 CEO's and CMO's from independent groups around the USA, I asked that question -- and how many hands went up do you think??

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Stop The Madness
Help Us Lead the Physician Wellness Movement
Quadruple Aim Physician Leadership Retreat
Get Complete Details at This Link
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ZERO - not a single one

The next words out of my mouth were "shame on you." I am sure that is something they have never heard from a speaker before -- and yet they knew my critique was spot on.

Two Leadership Consequences of NOT Rounding

Mayo's physician burnout super-study finally released their third round of data from the 2017 survey.

This was that infamous first study documenting burnout rates above 50% in US physicians in Mayo Clinic Proceedings using US physician burnout surveys performed in 2011 and 2014 compared to burnout in the general US population.

It is probably the single most important data point in the birth of the movement to track and address burnout in physicians. That movement has spread far and wide since 2011, culminating in the current wave of industry-wide confabs like the NAM Action Collaborative on Clinician Wellbeing and Resilience.

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This is Blog Post #292
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Since 2014 we have been waiting patiently for that third round of surveys to report out. Show us the 2017 data please, please, please ... and here it is.

When managers/leaders drive for production in the face of physician burnout ... this quote becomes the leadership lesson of the day.

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Physician Leadership's
Dirty Little Secrets Video Series is Here
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Unfortunately the absence of empathy and understanding is often a blind spot in physician leaders. 

The Business Case for Investing in Physician Wellbeing - a Triple Competitive Advantage for Your Organization

In this blog post let's look at what happens when you run physician burnout in reverse. Here's what I mean.