Here's how to bridge the doc, hospital exec communications gap

Hospitals buying physician practices may find they're not speaking the same business language initially. So hospital executives need to adapt to different needs and approaches to achieve cross-functional goals in such unions, experts cautioned during a Tuesday afternoon session at the Healthcare Financial Management Association's 2014 Annual National Institute in Las Vegas.

That's because doctors and business people are trained in different ways of thinking, said Dr. Paul Weygandt, vice president of physician services at Nuance Communication. It's the result of neurolinguistic programming, he explained.

Physicians are accustomed to making instant decisions, but businesspeople often spend more time gathering relevant information and analyzing it systematically over a longer period of time, Weygandt said. He should know. In addition to his medical degree, the orthopedic surgeon has an MBA, a law degree and a master of public health.

Weygandt, along with Money Atwal, chief financial officer and chief information officer for the East Hawaii region of the Hawaii Health Systems Corp., shared best practices for bridging the communication gap and properly engaging physicians as partners in achieving financial, clinical and operational goals. Among their key points:

• Communication: Collaborate with physicians on a regular basis, but tailor communication to the audience's needs. “You can't throw up a balance sheet or a profit and loss statement,” Atwal said. Instead, he suggested taking data and drawing correlations that are relevant to physicians, an approach also recommended by Weygandt. “I am at core a physician,” Weygandt said. “I hate spreadsheets at a meeting. Physicians want conclusions.”
• Involvement: Physicians should participate in both the selection and implementation of technologies. “Our patient portal was a hotly contested topic,” Atwal recalled. But after discussions among HCSC's Hilo Medical Center's medical informatics subcommittee—which includes physician representatives across specialties—the technology was adopted, allowing patients to securely access their medical records via the Internet.
• Education: It is also important to inform the broader medical staff of the clinical benefits of implementing new technologies and process improvements. Once physicians get on board, they can actually help fill this role. “In my experience, there was a general surgeon who was the most resistant to clinical documentation improvement,” Weygandt said. “But when he was convinced that it made him look good, he endorsed the process and became the most vocal advocate.”
• Lean processes: Apply strategies and techniques from Six Sigma, which is designed to improve quality and efficiency by removing defects and variability. Leverage the tools, but don't specifically talk about the principles, Atwal said. “I try not to use labels because it turns the physicians off,” he said.
• Focus: When considering changes to processes and technologies, focus on how those might affect physicians' activities and systems. To first identify needs and then to understand the potential impact of new initiatives, have executives shadow physicians, Atwal said.

“One of the most painful lessons comes if you implement and don't consider physician workflow,” Weygandt said.

Follow Rachel Landen on Twitter: @MHrlanden

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