The first requirement of a physician leader is humility. Physician innovators are aware that innovation is a team sport and a multi-disciplinary approach that ensure the professionals to the top of their license.Physicians who are willing to take on the challenge of leadership roles in healthcare organizations have to be willing to lead, redesign care and build outstanding teams from the outset. They should have the certain characteristics to lead a team .
The new breed of physicians needed today are Physician Innovators
This is the conclusion from all experiences and the findings of a few medical practitioners, chief among them being Donald M Berwick, MD, President Emeritus and Senior Fellow, Institute of Healthcare Improvement.
He has written a book “How physicians can fix healthcare, and here we bring you a few valid theories, hypothesis and findings from his research.”
He says that physicians need not lead the charge alone. There are physicians who have co-led innovation with non-physicians. In this case the physician is the medical director whereas the non-physician is the operations director. There is the other scenario wherein the non-physician with a tremendous amount of resource can lead the change and take different initiatives where by the physician may not be involved but will stand to benefit in terms of his work life becoming easier. Such work that’s see represents less than 10% of the total work that needs to be done.
This brings us to the question – What does a physician innovator look like? What is to be expected of a physician innovator?
According to Dr. Donald M Berwick the first requirement of a physician leader is humility. Physician innovators are also aware that innovation is a team sport and a multi-disciplinary approach should also ensure that the professionals are elevated to the top of their license. Physicians who are out there who are willing to take on the challenge of leadership roles in healthcare organizations have to be willing to lead, redesign care and build outstanding teams from the outset.
The initiatives should have the following characteristics:
1. There should be steadfast support and engagement from senior leaders.
2. These initiatives have a substantial impact on the work lives of the physicians involved
3. There has to be a resource commitment – least of all a few people, full time on each initiative
4. For a particular patient population this initiative should involve redesign of care right from scratch.
He also says that in his experience, the odds of success is a lot higher in those instances where physicians lead.
The American Association for Physician Leadership has been very supportive of innovation in healthcare delivery and believes that physician leadership is at the forefront of such innovation.