Physician PartnerSM: Building Stronger Alliances for Mutual Success
The Physician Partner solution helps you evolve physician relationships, align goals and realize improved financial outcomes. Creating involvement with and preference for your hospital — and realizing the improved financial outcomes — begins by understanding two distinct physician motivators: satisfaction and engagement.
Satisfied physicians practice medicine in an efficient and effective health care facility. Their foundational expectations for up-to-date medical equipment, timely test results, qualified hospital staff and efficient hospital processes are met. If these critical needs are not met, dissatisfied physicians may be inclined to send their patients elsewhere.
Physicians also expect to be involved in hospital planning and decision-making. They want confident hospital leaders and strong channels of communication. They also want leaders who they can trust and have a sense of pride in their association with the facility. These expectations are related to their level of engagement and are distinctly different from baseline satisfaction motivators.
Press Ganey defines physician engagement as demonstrating these psychological traits:
- Investment: An emotional investment in the hospital, its mission and its value; a sense of pride in their affiliation with the hospital.
- Involvement: Active involvement in improving hospital performance such as patient safety, quality, efficiency and strategic initiatives.
- Advocacy: Endorsement of the hospital to patients, medical colleagues and the community at large.
Physician Partnership: Higher satisfaction with higher engagement leads to dedicated partners who are strongly aligned with your organization’s goals.
When combined, satisfaction and engagement offer the means for creating powerful physician alliances that hospital leaders need to succeed in a challenging health care environment.
Opportunities to Effect Change
Each of the physician partnership dimensions — satisfaction and engagement — offers opportunities to effect change in the relationship to maximize your hospital’s performance. Some of these opportunities are:
- Ease of practice: Timely results, easy-to-use processes, the right medical equipment, efficient operating rooms and the ability to quickly oversee the care of their patients.
- Quality of care: Staff quality and reliability and collaboration for care.
- Confidence and trust: Confidence in leaders and a strong sense of leadership’s long-term commitment.
- Communication and responsiveness: Open, two-way communications, with responsiveness to and follow-through on concerns.
- Involvement in planning: Informing physicians and welcoming their input regarding hospital decision-making and planning.
Dramatic Transformation
Press Ganey consultants are uniquely positioned to provide you with more actionable and field-proven solutions to transform physicians into dedicated partners. It’s one of the key differentiators that has made Press Ganey the country’s preferred health care improvement provider. The Press Ganey Consulting Group brings the experience of hospital CEOs, medical practice executives and other health care leaders to your organization. They facilitate organizational structures to encourage stronger physician partnerships, physician focus groups, effective planning and better communications.
To learn more about the Physician Partner solution, or to talk with one of our experts, please telephone us at 800.232.8032 or contact us.
