Archive for February, 2011

One reason Barbara and I work so hard is our hope of leaving a legacy to other healthcare and medical practice consultants who will carry on our work. This feeling resonates from our spirits… we want to win, take our “A” game to clients. It’s the most satisfying of all the reasons we work.

The flip side is that often we have had to fortify our spirits to get through adversity, setbacks and delays. In the midst of these difficulties, we don our mental armor and get stronger. (That isn’t to say that we don’t have our moments after the consultation ends!)

Three common obstacles we have encountered:

1. Weak teams—some members just have to go
2. Recalcitrant Providers—“we’ve been doing this for 35 years… who are you”
3. Bureaucratic Processes—”we will have to take that to committee”

Because many of our medical practice consulting projects involve team-building, we have to guide and work with the people we inherit. Some are weak links, not engaged in the process of change, or worse, down-right instigators. We have learned (the hard way) to eliminate these employees as quickly as possible, so the team can move ahead with change implementation.

We have far more challenges with older physicians (our age!) than the generation Xers, who almost always welcome change, along with technology advancements. As you may have guessed, most of our resistant encounters have come from taking “seasoned” providers kicking and screaming to an electronic health record.

Finally, the layers of committees and politics can be very frustrating. We’ll think we have a project based on the enthusiasm of our contact, only to find that they have decided to do it themselves with internal resources. Many times we eventually get called in because there really weren’t the internal resources, process redesign knowledge or team objectivity to pull it off.

Despite these challenges, eight years later, we are still in business. We have learned to be patient, politically correct (took us a few times to get that right) and always look for opportunities to win our client’s respect.

Snippet
“If you’re going through hell, keep going!” – Winston Churchill