015 - Emergency Care Consultants CEO: The Incalculable Value of Physician Careers

Is it possible to create an outstanding organizational culture in what is often a hellhole of anguished patients, staff dissatisfaction, and high physician turnover? Emergency Medicine, with its high stress, high stakes, and ever-diminishing autonomy, has been a burnout zone for decades. Except—for almost thirty years there’s been an Emergency Medicine oasis in the Twin Cities. (Maybe it’s the wrong latitude for an “oasis” metaphor—perhaps an idyllic ice-fishing camp?) Anyway, Emergency Care Consultants (ECC) has consistently achieved excellent patient care, superb hospital relationships, high engagement, innovation, growth and nearly non-existent physician turnover.<br /><br />What’s the deal?<br /><br />Dr. Christopher Obetz, CEO, gets specific about what’s worked in ECC. Key organizing principles are physician ownership, physician decision-making, extensive participation in hospital and health system roles, support for splendid work lives, and of course, patient care at the center of everything.<br /><br />ECC Values:<br /><br />1. Provide outstanding emergency care—and make sure decisions don’t harm or detract from patient care. “It helps all of us keep our eyes on what’s most important, which is patient care. And that’s inarguable.”<br /><br />2. Focus on hospital and health system relationships. “We hope to be irreplaceable.”<br /><br />3. Focus on “us”—by minimizing overwork (no “crispy” doctors), and assuring plenty of family time, good pay, support for the physicians’ passions and aspirations, and flexible work hours, a.k.a. Shift Nirvana. Excuse me, what’s that you say? Shift Nirvana? Why?? See Value #1.<br /><br />For show notes and more visit: <a href="https://fahyconsulting.com/podcast/" rel="noopener">https://fahyconsulting.com/podcast/</a>