I am writing this from returning fresh off the Annual Conference held in Las Vegas last week. If you have not attended a National MGMA Conference for any reason, I urge you to attend at least once and challenge yourself why you wouldn't attend regularly!
One of the general themes throughout this conference was the differences in generations within the workplace. We, as medical executives, will need to understand ("verstahen") the next employees and leaders in our industry. There is no doubt that the next generations will do things differently; think differently and act according to their particular histories and experiences.
The last speaker of the conference was Frank Cohen, who is certainly one of my favorite speakers and he brought up Evidence-Based Management in his talk. I have written a blog on EBM before, and I don't like redundancy, but I am so happy Frank included this concept in his talk. In this article, the authors point to the fact that medical decisions have historically been made with evidence (i.e. lab values, diagnostic results, etc.). Indeed, this is true and yet there is an art to medicine as well when physicians interpret values and have to look the patient in the eye and yield an opinion. Why does EBM matter to us? It matters to me because it changes up the way I make decisions. It forces the executive who has been hired based on experience under his or her belt to yield to what is reality. After accepting reality in our workplace, we make decisions based on objective data, (and here is the key) without our bias. Sounds easy-but is it? How many times have we known how to "fix" something, but it hasn't quite gone the way it should have because we just didn't accept or take into account some other realities in our workplace? As we start to hire different generations of employees and leaders, we need to accept that the way we have "got things done around here" will get done-differently.
The next big challenge I propose for us to get through as we see newer generations in the workplace is stopping ourselves and flipping the mirror around. This is where workplace civility has an opening to really shift our thinking and change our lens to ensure a healthy workplace. Consider this definition of Professional Civility, as one that "supports the public presentation of others' identites as competent and valued people in the work context" (Fritz, 2011). I can see how this definition will need to be pasted somewhere (everywhere!) in my office to remind me that what I know to be evident of what works, can also be addressed by others with a different way to achieve the same results. How timely! We see different generations entering our industry with a different way of not only doing things but also perhaps different lifestyles that are foreign to many of us. This starts with newer physicians coming out of residency to our front desk and billing staff.
As my practice is experiencing incredible growth at the moment, we find ourselves during business meetings feeling the pressure of how to deliver quality patient care with the scarce resources we have. Scarcity in obtaining quality physicians that fit into our culture-is a constant challenge. Yet, during these times, it is extremely important to engage in professional civility to keep the health of the organization intact.
"Civility builds energy and fosters goodwill among and between coworkers, creating contexts resistant to neurotic guilt, the feeling that someone is looking over one's shoulder, waiting for a mistake and an opportunity for the inevitable "Gotcha!" (Fritz, 2011). Neurotic (organizational) guilt...what a great definition of what can happen in our workplace when we are not engaging in communication that fosters that goodwill necessary for a healthy organizational foundation. Communicative gestures are included in this concept of professional civility.
I had the privilege of being part of the Newcomers Reception and was matched up with 2 other new members to MGMA. The reception was exquisite. I never did find my two newcomers (I hope you were doing something fun!), but what I saw was an extraordinary display of professional civility. As I walked around meeting members that had been in the industry for many years to the newcomer who asked me what the code was so she could log on with her Mac notebook...wow. Exhilarating! What a wonderful scene of creating new professional contexts to welcome in this next generation.
We will not always have complete control over Congressional decisions or other complex system movements, but we DO have the opportunity to choose civility, regardess of where we are and what system we practice in.
Fritz, J.H.F. (2011) "Civility in the Workplace." Spectra, September, 2011, Vol. 47, Number 3.