If you give smart people with aligned incentives the same set of facts, nine times out of ten they will come to the same conclusions about what needs to be done. And then they will do it.

Above is a quotation from Mike Troiano a social media pioneer @ Holland Mark agency.

via www.holland-mark.com

I'm often asked by health care improvement teams "how can I get the doctors/nurses/secretaries/you-name-it to buy in to the changes we need to make?"  The question can come in many guises but the root cause is often the same: the group of people working together are often not on the same page.  While they're not usually working in opposition to each other, there is a lack of coordinated effort that results in gross inefficiency as well as no consensus on how well things are going.

Example:

I was working with a pediatrics residency outpatient department that was trying to reduce the backlog of appointments so that they could possibly achieve 'open access.'  Their intervention was to do some evening sessions dedicated to well child check/school physicals in August.  Staff stayed late & worked hard.  A week later at a meeting I asked "So, did you achieve your objectives?"  The answers varied from "Absolutely" to "No."  Discussion of the variation in response lead to a recognition that individuals had different goals in mind and therefore had a different way of defining success.  The net result of all that time and effort was a disappointing realization that they'd have to do it all over again after coming together around defined goals.

Mike Troiano connects the dots between common objectives, aligned incentives, a defined set of measures (facts) that come to life as a cornerstone of effective management.  Medical office practices are complex systems.  We can use our gut and intuition and muddle through, but when we agree on principles and metrics we can achieve brilliance. 

Comments

[Michael Troiano]

Well said, Gordon. And thanks for the link.

Mike Troiano | @miketrap

[Deborah Mourey]

Hi Gordon, I was drawn to this title..and then I saw Ideal Medical Practices and thought you may be involved. I'm glad you are out there sharing your experience.

In fact, I was just talking to a health care software company about helping physician practices think like a micropractice and was tossing around your name.

This post is a great example of the power of alignment. I'll bet if you asked the people who received care during the 'test' period, the response would vary some too.

Gordon, thank you for your leadership and caring. Please blog more about your experiences. I have a new blog Healthcare 3.0 that talks about the intersection of technology and patient. Best of everything to you and your family. I would like to stay in contact with you, can I find you on Linked In?