Creating Value in Organization Structure - The Service Line Approach -- Part 3: 11 Early Lessons Learned

Monday, May 14, 2012 | MedAxiom

The road to creating a horizontally oriented structure in the face of a well-established vertical business structure model is not typically easily accomplished. The course of constructing the service line, in most institutions, is transformative. Virtually every reporting relationship and decision making structure is potentially disrupted. Early adapting warriors on the fields have found several truths to creating successful service lines.

• A transformative vision attracts physicians and staff to a new and better future, engendering support and buy-in.
• Senior leadership support and communication are required to teach and transform.
• Understanding that the skills required for a service line leader may not be the same as those of a physician practice leader or a department leader.  Leadership of the service line, both clinically and administratively, will have to be carefully selected and developed.
• Deliberate and obtuse on-boarding tactics to facilitate the physician practice’s cultural integration is a critical at the outset of the integration.
• Positive physician energy will fuel the effort; lack of physician energy, – regardless of the degree of staff energy, will kill it.
• Those most powerful will have to compromise.  Period.
• Trust is a series of trustworthy events…trust is required to overcome the inevitable bumps, start building now!
• The three most important aspects to building trust are: transparency, transparency and transparency.  Transparency is data, in objectives, and in everything is required to build trust and credibility.
• Leaders will be pushing the snowball up the mountain until the organization adopts a “we” orientation, vs. us and them.
• Unleashing the physician’s clinical expertise to reconcile and establish clinical standards around which efficient processes, empowered staff and leveraged information technology systems will deliver improved quality and decreased cost.  Decision making models and compensation plan design, giving the physicians the authority and responsibility to create value are the vehicles to facilitate performance.