Administration Mini-Fellowship September Meeting: Physician Leadership

We are excited to announce the reinstatement of the Administration Mini-Fellowship with our meeting last month. The Administration Mini-Fellowship will be a learning and networking group advised by Dr. Ninfa Mehta, SUNY Downstate’s ED Medical Director.

At our first meeting we discussed physician leadership & hospital performance from 2 articles: “Why the Best Hospitals are Managed by Doctors” by Stoller et al. in the Harvard Business Review and a study by Tasi et al. comparing hospital outcomes from physician-led versus non-physician-led hospitals.^1,² Tasi et al found that physician-led hospitals were associated with better quality ratings (from the US News and World Report Rankings) and efficiency (using inpatient days per hospital bed as a proxy) without a difference in financial performance (revenue, net income). Conclusions from the study are limited by lack of controls for other hospital characteristics.

Intuitively, we expected that physician-led hospitals should perform better but also acknowledged the shortcomings of physician leaders. Stoller et al. summarized some of these factors. Doctors make good managers because they have “peer-to-peer credibility” and know the environment on the clinical front lines. Other organizations in which domain experts become leaders (e.g. basketball players turned coaches) are also linked to better performance. Unfortunately, doctors do not get explicit leadership and management training, and in fact, the traditional “command and control” physician role can stymie collaboration.

The Admin Mini-Fellowship looks forward to continuing this conversation and fulfilling our learning interests together. Future activities will include:

Regular meetings on foundational administrative and business topics chosen by the meeting facilitator. Example topic areas include operations, management, finance, billing, medicolegal, industry overviews, and career advice.
Hosting networking events with health care leaders inside and outside of our institution.
Keeping each other up to date on local and national events, resources, and organizations that will facilitate our learning and career advancement.

References

Why The Best Hospitals Are Managed by Doctors [Internet]. Harvard Business Review. 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 19];Available from: https://hbr.org/2016/12/why-the-best-hospitals-are-managed-by-doctors
Tasi MC E al. Does physician leadership affect hospital quality, operational efficiency, and financial performance? – PubMed – NCBI [Internet]. [cited 2018 Oct 19];Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28700509