970-bed Independent Academic Medical Center

The client is a 970-bed independent academic health center in the Southwest, the flagship of the dominant health system in a very crowded market. Its medical staff includes both a large full-time model and an extensive, highly competitive private practice complement.

The Challenge:

The client asked The Bard Group to examine whether its medical staff was organized in such a way as to support the center’s vision, strategy, and goals. 

The Solution:

Our assessment revealed three vital areas that threatened the progress of the center’s strategic objectives:

• The framework of physician leadership
• The design of quality-improvement programs
• The alignment between medical and hospital staff

The center needed a new performance management system to not only kick-start a close relationship with its medical staff, but also galvanize its physicians around hospital goals.

The new performance management system required the client to:

• Clarify and formalize physician leadership roles
• Remodel medical staff organization
• Redesign its mechanism for peer and quality review
• Establish clear links between the medical staff and the medical center’s quality program
• Form clinical councils

The Impact:

Because the medical staff now has a substantive voice in quality and clinical care improvement, its physicians have become an integral force behind hospital strategy.