Practical changes for improving practice management

April 8, 2018|The Hospitalist

An all-day HM18 pre-course – “Hospitalist Practice Management: How to Thrive in a Time of Intense Change” – for hospitalist leaders and practice administrators was all about practicality.

One of the goals of the session was to provide “quick, actionable interventions that attendees can implement right away, as well as alternatives for attendees to consider, which will require some work to employ,” said John Nelson, MD, MHM, a partner at Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants, La Quinta, Calif., the medical director of the Overlake Medical Center, Bellevue, Wash., and a course codirector and a faculty presenter.

Session speakers addressed strategies to help position a hospitalist group for success, “which we define as having happy physicians and other providers, good metrics performance, and good financial performance,” Dr. Nelson, a cofounder and past president of SHM, said in an interview before the pre-course.

Dr. Nelson pointed out that the hospitalist practice is a unique practice model. “We can’t effectively use the same approaches that other medical specialties use to ensure we have successful practices,” he said.

The pre-course, held Sunday before the official start of HM18, included more commentary and specifics than in past years about how to prosper in the rapidly changing health care landscape and how to reduce the chance of burnout.

“Our goal is to help hospitalist groups put the right operational framework and infrastructure into place so they can be successful in taking care of patients and deliver value to institutions where they work,” Leslie Flores, MHA, SFHM, a partner at Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants, who was the course codirector, said in an interview before the session.

Topics addressed included how to find, measure, and demonstrate value; how to incorporate different types of providers and clinical support staffing into a practice to support hospitalists; and how to recruit the right people and build a desirable culture.