In order for organizations to thrive, leaders need highly engaged physicians now more than ever.  Go to any conference frequented by healthcare CEOs and when the discussion turns to challenges, physician engagement is right up there near the top of the list.  This is true even in healthcare systems which employ their own medical staff.

Each engaged physician generated an extra $460,000 in patient revenue for the health system per year.

A relatively recent Gallup report noted that engaged physicians were much more productive (26% more productive than non-engaged docs). Each engaged physician generated an extra $460,000 in patient revenue for the health system per year. The capacity to engage physicians to become not only directionally aligned but committed to the change necessary to achieve enterprise goals is therefore vital.

Physician engagement is not an inscrutable mystery, a trade secret or some mystical Jedi force.  It’s a trainable skill. Physician engagement is most often brought about by leaders whose leadership style heavily weights trust, transparency, deep listening and compassion.

Perhaps to better understand how to engage physicians successfully, discussing how to disengage physicians might be instructive.  Ask yourself what I would need to do to reduce physician engagement? That’s easy, right? How about materially changing their clinical role, schedule or on call responsibilities? Without their understanding or consent, decrease their autonomy, make them jump through what they consider to be meaningless hoops and cut their pay. Autonomy, schedule, nightcall, income, respect; these are the hot button issues.

Most private practice doctors are growth focused, small business men and women. No small business owner wants to see their business harmed. Remember this.

So what’s the secret to driving physician engagement?  Physicians, like most highly educated individuals are motivated primarily by the intrinsic drive for autonomy, mastery and meaning. Forget this at your peril.

As a successful multi-term medical staff president, what I saw engage physicians again and again (even in situations fraught with conflict) was this simple 3 step process: Listen, Care and Try.

1. Listen: Don’t talk, just listen and clearly understand where the doctor is coming from
2. Care: Leaders need to genuinely care and then show the doctors that they care.  (A history of credibility goes a long way here.)
3. Try: Attempt to achieve what I call, “the triple win,” a win for the physician, a win for the enterprise and most importantly, a win for the patient. Appealing to a physician’s core value of improving patient care can go a long way.

In conflict situations, this means repeating these three steps with all parties in the conflict.

Success breeds more success and credibility.  On that rare occasion when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object and all one can do is try, one might not fully succeed, but if the leaders have earned credibility, the doctors will appreciate that they really did try. The physicians will remain engaged if there is trust and mutual respect.

One may be surprised how many times one can find the triple win, with an open mind, genuine respect for all parties, and true compassion.

And one more thing to remember, everybody goes to work to be appreciated. Show  appreciation for your coworkers every day, with both words and deeds.