While I had my feet sunk into the Florida sand for a week, I started reading the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins. I am halfway through it because there are some books that you just cannot race through and this is one of them. If you have read it-you know where I'm going here and if you haven't perhaps your appetite will be stimulated. Collin's book is more of a research question ("what makes a company go from just "good" to "great"?) answered through diligent research methods with the parameter of "great" equalling sustained growth for greater than 15 years. This isn't a book review (so keep reading), but it was a platform for this early morning blog. (that's right-couldn't sleep-had to get up at 5am and write)
After my trip, I co-presented with John Nelson, MD from SHM on a scheduling and staffing webinar. If you didn't have an opportunity to sit in live, the gist of his part of the presentation was to give you realistic models of hospitalist staffing and scheduling and my role was to share real life experience. So, I thought about my real life experience in this over the last 6 months, and then picked up this book I started thinking what would define good to great in a medical practice?
I have enjoyed the political medical metanarrative of late on how to "fix" our health care "crisis". Regardless of what party is ruling the administration, we will always on defense on why we deserve more reimbursement, etc. But I'm challenging myself to define what makes medicine, or on a more micro level-my practice truly "great". I envision myself in front of Congress at times (wow) trying to explain what makes this industry truly great as compared to other models in the world. In many areas of medicine we do little to grow-more people need more care, so the demand is constant and in fact a little too constant at times. Time and time again at national MGMA meetings this fact is pressed home with general themes of customer service and how to make your practice a "best" practice. However, one of the many reasons politics is involved in medicine is unless you are in the trenches-you couldn't possibility understand the complexity in our little corner of the world here. We don't manufacture stuff and when a good outcome happens it is because of many factors.
Agree?
The uncertainty of the new administration and what it's definition of what medical care and models should be shouldn't rattle us to the point where we think we have no control. I am reminded of a psychological concept in Collin's book called the Stockdale Paradox: "Retain absolute faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be." Our collective brutal fact is change is coming our way, and we don't know how big or small. My personal opinion on "change" is of course and we can probably stop dwelling on this notion. In the end-people will need medical care regardless of the delivery system and we do have a huge part in shaping that environment. What is your part?