Strategic Intent #4 - Physician Alignment:
Community Hospital will be a leader in promoting, integrating, and facilitating physician service to our entire community and adoption of evidenced-based, best-practice clinical care. Together with our medical staff leadership, we will proactively address the critical strategic issues of patient access, physician recruitment, leadership development, physician satisfaction, and information sharing (e.g., coordinated electronic medical records).
Key metrics:
- In our community, there currently is a shortage of 18 full-time equivalent (FTE) primary care physicians. By December 31, 2009, we will reduce that deficit to 13 physician FTEs and by December 31, 2010, to 7 physician FTEs.
- We will develop and launch a coordinated approach to electronic health records between the hospital and community physicians by September 1, 2009. Of the top 50 admitters and primary care physicians on the active medical staff, at least 50 percent will be sharing information via the new system by January 1, 2011.
Strategic Initiatives:
1. Primary Care Recruitment and Retention Plan
- Will go-live with first Peninsula Primary Care 1204(a) clinic in Carmel by August, 2009.
- Will have developed construction and site plan for the second Peninsula Primary Care clinic in Marina , as well as begin preparing site location by January 31, 2010.
2. Physician Satisfaction
- Set improvement targets based upon the survey, and prioritize initiatives that align with these targets by August 31, 2009.
3. Information Sharing
- Launch a coordinated approach to AEHR.
Why This Is Important:
When community residents don't have access to the care they need, or if the care provided locally is not affordable or consistent with accepted evidence-based standards, collectively all providers have failed to deliver on our shared healthcare mission.
Our community faces a serious and worsening shortage of the quantity of physicians necessary to assure access to patient care. This shortage is in concert with a national shortage of physicians in the workforce creating a highly competitive market for physicians. Our community is poorly positioned to compete at a national level for the recruitment of new physicians. New strategies must evolve for the recruitment of new physicians to serve the peninsula.
Further, physicians face growing challenges in operating both the clinical and business elements of their practices. Community Hospital believes that we must partner with our physicians to address these challenges, in order to retain the excellent physicians currently serving our community.
For Community Hospital and physicians to work together productively and collaboratively to address the changing healthcare needs of our community, we must develop strong physician leadership adept at establishing a shared vision of the future and changing quickly. Jointly, we will need to work collaboratively to assess healthcare trends in our region and aggressively expand services when the opportunity arises.
