Physician Leadership: Performance Improvement Basics

Tuesday, May 24, 2016 | Dr. Edward Walker

In Session 3 of MedAxiom’s Physician Leadership Foundation Certificate series, held on June 9th in Washington DC at the 2016 CVSL Symposium, Dr. Ed Walker will focus on Performance Improvement Basics. Following is a brief overview of what will be discussed during this 4-hour session. If you have participated in either Session 1 or Session 2 (being held on June 8th), be sure to register for Session 3.

Quality improvement centers on two key ideas: doing right things and doing things right. Physician leaders must be able to discern the big picture actions necessary to keep patients safe, provide them access, promote patient and physician/staff satisfaction, achieve evidence-based outcomes and do all of this cost-effectively.

It’s easy for early leaders to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of required actions, often resulting in leadership paralysis or an ineffective, poorly executed plan.

The doing right things part involves prioritization of actions, choosing what the correct leadership actions are that will promote quality. It’s easy for early leaders to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of required actions, often resulting in leadership paralysis or an ineffective, poorly executed plan. Knowing what needs to be done and in what order to get the greatest overall quality are key.

Next, the doing things right aspect encourages leaders, once they have their priorities, to create high reliability organizations; care is consistently and uniformly given across all quality domains using best evidence, allowing only necessary variation (e.g., the needs of a pregnant woman might be necessarily different). Knowing what needs to be done and then managing the doing of it uniformly is the key message of the course. Reliability is consistency: you will get the same high-quality care irrespective of which physician in the group cares for you, and the care will be tailored for your individual needs when necessary.

The leadership role here is to standardize what is done, and the actions of those who are doing it, by removing unnecessary variations while preserving the option to personalize care when necessary.

---

 

Edward A. Walker, MD, MHA, Professor Emeritus, Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Health Services, University of Washington, facilitates MedAxiom’s Physician Leadership Foundation Certificate series. Sessions from this 4-part series are held throughout the year in conjunction with MedAxiom conferences. Sessions 2 and 3 will be offered June 8^th and 9^th in Washington, DC, at the 2016 CVSL Symposium. Learn more and register at CVSL16.com.

Want more from Dr. Walker?
He and Dr. Warren Levy discuss what they believe is the "secret sauce" of physician leadership.