Physicians Convene at the AAPL Fall Institute To Learn Leadership Skills

The American Association for Physician Leadership began its Fall Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, this week, convening more than 400 physicians from across the country who are advancing their careers and professional standing by developing stronger leadership skills.

The scenic sunsets and mountainous skyline served as a metaphor for the leadership challenges that physicians need to tackle in the face of a changing healthcare landscape.

Those challenges were articulated by the morning keynote presenter Susan Dentzer. Many of these are articulated in an upcoming whitepaper being published by the AAPL, Physician Leadership: More Valuable Than Ever:

• Shifts from volume-based care delivery to a value-based system of care.

• Public health-oriented focus on the management of populations toward wellness and resolving the multitude of social determinants of health.

• New preference for person-centered care, coupled with shared decision-making.

• Redesign of safe, efficient, high-quality clinical care models in diverse settings.

• Financial payment models that had begun rewarding healthcare organizations for clinical excellence and coordinated care at reduced cost.

• Emerging shared risk, capitation, and bundled payment strategies.

Additional headwinds that she articulated include new entrants in the healthcare field such as Amazon and Walmart, downward pressure on payments, demographic changes, inflation, workforce shortages, hospital and health system consolidation, private equity in healthcare, clinician burnout, and anger toward physicians (largely driven by the pandemic).

Another challenge that Dentzer articulated has been a series of public legislative and judicial rulings that have been at odds with many of the goals of the physician and healthcare community.

Dentzer then applied Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to situations in healthcare:

1. Be proactive

2. Begin with the end in mind

3. Put first things first

4. Think win-win

5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood

6. Synergize

7. Sharpen the saw

The day-long sessions provided a series of strategies led by experts in their field:

• Value-Based Care, led by Grace Terrell, president and CEO of Cornerstone Health Care

• Essentials of Health Law, taught by Michael Sacopulos, AAPL’s SoundPractice podcast host

• Fundamentals of Physician Leadership: Quality, led by David Nash, Dr. Raymond C., and Doris N. Grandon professor of health policy, at the Jefferson College of Population Health

• Managing Physician Performance, led by William Martin, DePaul University, director and associate professor

• Resolving Conflict, led by Allison Linney, president of Allison Partners

New to AAPL was a session on improving networking skills, and it was exciting to see a room full of accomplished physicians address their fears and misgivings toward a very basic professional skill.

One attendee compared networking to the act of contributing toward one’s retirement savings account: you must do a little bit all along, even though it's uncomfortable, because at the end of the day if you don’t have a full network of contacts – and a healthy savings – there will be a challenging situation to face.

Led by the charismatic pair of Keith Bailey and Alyce Blum, the session taught the attendees several networking strategies:

• A.S.K.: Always seek knowledge of others

• Be Courageous: Try something different

• Be Yourself: Instead of asking “where are you from?”, or “what do you do?” ask someone a question about what they do in their personal lives to spark a conversation

The session leaders also reminded people of a key strategy in networking conversation: that most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply. That’s a lesson that can apply to the physician-patient relationship, too.

If nothing else, the audience seemed to enjoy the creative diversion of the session, taking a moment to stand up and shake and to practice networking by engaging and getting to know their fellow attendees.