AAPL Webinar With Quint Studer, Dan Smith to Address Physician Engagement

During the free session Feb. 28 at noon, the longtime health care consultants will discuss ways physician leaders can better align their staff with organizational goals. Register now.

Many hospital administrators struggle with engaging and aligning their staffs, says Quint Studer, a former health care consultant and hospital president, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

“I think everything in health care is an easy fix, but we make it too complex instead of fixing it,” he says.

Quint Studer, left, and Dan Smith, MD, will offer their expertise on physician engagement and organizational culture during a Feb. 28 webinar hosted by AAPL.

It so happens that Studer enjoys sharing his expertise with physician leaders on improving organizational performance and patient care. He’ll do so Feb. 28 at noon, during a free webinar hosted by the American Association for Physician Leadership. He’ll be joined by Dan Smith , MD, executive medical director for the Studer Group, the health care consultancy Studer founded in 2000.

In the 1990s, Studer served as president of Baptist Hospital in Pensacola, Florida, and chief operating officer of Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, resuscitating both facilities through techniques aimed at nurturing employee culture. After starting the Studer Group, he has been a speaker, an author, a baseball team owner and an entrepreneur. He stepped away from the Studer Group in 2016 to focus on philanthropy.

Smith, an emergency room physician, joined the Studer Group in 2009 and serves as a senior coach, speaker and executive medical director. He works in a variety of areas, including medical practices and emergency departments.

The one-hour webinar will focus ways physician leaders can address employee alignment with organizational goals – that being a motivated staff, hence improved patient care and a stronger bottom line. Studer says that begins with providing doctors – the primary source of revenue – with a culture that caters to their success.

The priority is engagement, especially with doctors having difficulty buying in. How do you get them emotionally invested, thinking about fulfilling organization’s goals every day? How do you remove their barriers to success, such as stress and burnout? How do you drive performance excellence?

“Fix the stuff that drives them crazy,” Studer says.

An analogy drives home his point.

“It seems like the last two years everybody’s been telling the docs to learn how to meditate and be more mindful, be more resilient, be more mindful. Those are all nice,” Studer says. “So, if I’m at the airport and my plane gets delayed, I can say, ‘You know what, I’m learned meditation, I’m going to do a mantra here. Do some breathing.’ Or, I’m going to be more resilient to deal with all these delays.

“Wouldn’t it be really nice, though, if the airlines would just run on time? And I think what a doctor’s life is like many times going to their office or going to hospital or going wherever they are going … their airplanes run late too often.”

Webinar participants can expect Studer and Smith to present some common-sense tools and techniques to increase physician engagement. In other words, “Treat them like a valuable resource,” Studer says.

Click here to register for the webinar.

Rick Mayer is a senior editor with the American Association for Physician Leadership.