Listen to your medical staff. Really listen.

We compiled tips from MSPs about how they achieve buy-in from the medical staff in the August issue of Briefings on Credentialing (available online in mid-July). But MSPs aren’t the only ones who search for medical staff buy-in. Hospitals also rely on them to implement projects.

Benjamin F. Call, M.D., FACC, a past medical staff president, and current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello, Idaho says there are a number of techniques for achieving buy-in. “Our hospital’s gone through a series of transitions in its administrative style of management. There are several things we have done that have really made a big difference,” he says.

The following are some buy-in strategies he’s seen the MSP use that can also be used by the hospital:

• Every change initiative needs a champion, someone who’s willing to take some personal risk to make it go forward. Be passionate about your cause, or find a champion for the cause who will share his or her passion for the cause with others to help grow support for it.
• Educate yourself as much as possible about the issues you’re speaking about so your audience sees you as an expert.
• Encourage your medical staff leadership to become fully trained. Encourage them to approach learning the skills of medical staff (MS) leadership as they would learning a new medical subspecialty. Facilitate attendance at training courses on how to be an effective MS leader, preferably off-site. It will open their eyes to a vision of what MS leadership is all about.
• Show others specific data that backs up your point. It is hard to argue with hard data.
• Help redefine the meaning of the environment (for example, we’re not standing in the middle of a forest, we’re creating a highway). Inspire others with a vision that redefines the status quo as a stepping-stone to a desired future.
• Build a link of trust and understanding

One of the ways Call’s organization implemented the last strategy was by establishing monthly, two-hour long dinner meetings with physicians and hospital leadership. The administration selects a panel of about 15-18 physicians that meets every month. Although the leadership usually has some topics in mind that they’d like to discuss at the meetings, the practitioners are free to bring up anything they’d like to talk about from medical records to the nursing staff’s quality of care. “The physicians know they’ll always have a voice,” he says.

By meeting with a variety of practitioners rather than those in medical staff leadership roles, the hospital better gauges the opinions of all medical staff members. In theory, the medical staff leadership is supposed to represent the view of the entire medical staff, but sometimes it is hard for the president of the medical staff who may be an OB doctor, for example, to know about the needs of cardiologists, radiologists, general surgeons, and other diverse practitioners. By using a round table, dinner meeting approach, the hospital is able to access their views directly.

When the hospital administration is considering implementing a new project, first they’ll take it to their management team and then to the physician’s round table. At the roundtable the administration seeks physicians’ input on various matters understanding that unless there is physician buy-in, any change initiative will likely not be successful. In so doing the administration recognizes the importance of seeking first to understand, then to be understood. Only then can a proposal advance to the hospital board for final approval. Building the physician roundtable into that process is an essential step that clearly helps foster medical staff support for hospital initiatives, as well as creating a foundation of communication and trust.