Come “Fix”​ Our Engagement

I was called recently by people at a very large hospital, in a very large hospital system, in a very large city. Let me clarify. The people (medical directors) were not representing the hospital or hospital system, per se. These directors were worried about their doctors leaving and the inability to recruit more physicians. They wanted me to come to talk to the physician leaders on the topic of engagement. 

I spent a good amount of time with these two medical directors on a zoom call to get more clarification. It turns out that hospital and hospital system administrators weren’t involved in this situation. The directors didn’t even know what the hospital’s thought process was other than they wanted the physicians to start seeing more patients in less time. Ouch. 

As you may already predict, this consulting gig went nowhere. I did a quit audit for them for free. Their physicians felt overworked and underappreciated with new demands coming soon. Also, the administrators were continuing to mess with the contract. Add to this that there was no buy-in from the people on top so doing a seminar on engagement for doctors would go nowhere because the upper management was not involved in fixing things.  I recommended starting with a Net Provider Score to see if and how bad the problem was. I also recommended trying to find out whether the administrators thought there was a problem or even cared if there was one. 

Their answer?

They were putting all their plans on hold. 

I believe the two medical directors had their hearts right place but what the hell will engagement training do? 

If your physician work environment sucks and the doctors feel that then let’s not play games with stupid euphemisms like “engagement.” You need much more help than that. If you are reading this and have the same issues then please get my book on Physician Retention. Start there. Then I would love the opportunity to hear from you after if you are interested in real help.  There is more information on my website.