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Strategizing Patient Safety Efforts

Patient Safety Quality Monthly, October 27, 2005

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Dear Colleague,

As a native of the south side of Chicago and a life long White Sox fan, I have enjoyed a tremendous championship season this year from a team that no one expected to achieve anything. This led me to think about what makes a champion.

The answer for the White Sox this year was solid performance from all its players. But it wasn't an accident. That was the strategy that they chose to pursue last winter as they redesigned their team. For Boston last year, it focused more on spectacular performance from several key players. Clearly, there is no one formula.

So what makes a great physician champion? I often hear that term used these days as healthcare organizations are seeking to move forward clinical practice and patient safety initiatives affecting physicians. Everybody is looking for this rare and valuable commodity. But where should you look and what should you look for?

The most important step in the process is to define what you want your champion to do. Do you want him or her to:

1. Actually develop the specifics for a new initiative?
2. Develop the change management strategy to successfully implement the initiative?
3. Just be an advocate for a specific initiative that has been already developed?
4. All of the above

Clearly each option requires somewhat different levels of skill. If you want "All of the above," you are probably going to need a physician who has received some level of formal training or experience as a physician executive. Building consensus and managing change alone generally require a higher level of skill and time commitment than is typically found in most voluntary medical staff leaders.

But this doesn't mean you have to go out and hire a full-time VPMA, although that can be a good way to jump start your program. It does mean that if you decide to invest internally in a physician to perform these functions, you need to select someone who can manage by building consensus and is willing to get the training they need to develop these skills.

You can also develop multiple champions who contribute in different ways. Some physicians can be good advocates if someone else can help with development and strategy. Others may be excellent champions by their content expertise and clinical credibility and merely need to be given an official role. The best systems seem to place a physician in charge of developing the champions that the organization needs to create and sustain multiple initiatives over time.

Solid performance across the entire line-up was the key to the White Sox this year. If you don't have the physician champions you need to promote quality and patient safety, develop a strategy that will get you there and put the players in your line-up that will make it happen.

Regards,

Bob Marder, MD
Practice Director, Quality and Patient Safety
The Greeley Company

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