Assume for a moment you’re not a compliance officer. You’re the chief executive officer (CEO) of ABC Hospital, and you’re looking to expand the hospital’s service line. During a recent strategic planning meeting, your chief operating officer (COO) pitches an idea: “What if we partnered with a XYZ Cardiology, P.C. (XYZ) to open a new clinic focused on vascular services?” The idea piques your interest. With the assistance of legal counsel, you move forward. You negotiate and sign compliant agreements with XYZ and set a go-live date.
During your most recent meeting with the cardiologists, there was discussion about a need to market this new venture and who would pay for it. The physicians are asking the hospital to bear the costs of marketing because the new clinic is going to be located on the hospital’s campus. You email your compliance officer to ask if the hospital can pay for these expenses since the physicians will be benefiting from the marketing. Your compliance officer responds by saying no. She doesn’t offer an explanation. She doesn’t ask any questions about the venture or the marketing campaign. She doesn’t even offer an alternative option.
If you were this CEO, would you feel supported?
A consistent theme in all of the strategies I will cover in this blog is being mindful of your audience. This is particularly important when it comes to healthcare leaders. That means at times, you need to be thinking like a healthcare leader—not a compliance officer.
That means listening to what they’re telling you, and approaching your work with consideration of their viewpoint, not yours. If you are a leader, what obstacles or challenges do you face? What motivates you in the performance of your role? What political pressures do you face? These are just some of the questions you need to be thinking about when communicating with your healthcare leaders about compliance matters.
Always be Identifying Their Point of View
A significant step toward thinking like a healthcare leader is identifying their point of view (POV). While POV is specific to a leader’s role, personality, and the issue being addressed, there are some POVs that apply to most healthcare leaders. For example, consider the topic of change—I mean from an evolutionary standpoint, not a monetary one. Healthcare at a very basic level is a service industry. Considering that a leader’s role and objectives are to move the organization forward, leaders must continually embrace change in order to succeed. As a consequence, implementing newer, faster, or better ways to deliver healthcare will always be a factor in the mind of your healthcare leaders. As the compliance officer, you have to accept that leaders will always be pushing for change.
Another universally held POV is determining what is in the best interest of the patient. With any business decision a healthcare leader makes, that question floats across the brain. Overall, this POV is focused on what is safe and of high quality yet practical and efficient.
A final example of a universal POV among healthcare leaders is determining what is in the best interest of the organization. Here, this POV is focused on ensuring the organization is moving forward within the market while protecting it from financial, legal, and reputational risk.
Pulling it All Together
Having an awareness for how your leaders think will help you in navigating the politics of healthcare. You will understand why certain decisions are made, recognize why you are getting pushback, and have the ability to anticipate future decisions. In order to think like a healthcare leader, we need to climb into their minds.
Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll take a look at several different types of healthcare leaders in a typical healthcare organization providing patient care. We’ll look what shapes their POV, some of their political pressures, and how to position compliance to appeal to their particular POV.