On October 10th, Dr. Haynes’ will serve on the panel “The Social and Financial Impacts of the Opioid Epidemic – Thoughts on Reducing Reliance on Opioids” at Becker’s Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker’s is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place October 9-12, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Dr. Haynes’ session, click here.
Question: What is the No. 1 principle you uphold and practice to effectively lead a team?
Gary Haynes: Maintaining transparency is very important to recruiting and retaining a professional team. Physicians can select from many opportunities and as very intelligent, highly educated people they will critically evaluate how well we operate the business of medicine, and they pick up on both the obvious and the subtle clues of their organizations. Maintaining transparency is not only important to assembling and keeping the team together, every project, every effort has high and low points. Maintaining clarity on the goals, and on the obstacles as they are encountered is necessary when navigating a difficult course. Staying clear and accurate on objectives and the problems encountered along the way also serves as a self-check to make certain I fully understand the problems at hand.
Q: As a leader, how do you stay connected to the actual work that is being done – and not just by watching others execute, but by executing yourself? If so, how do you balance between leading and executing personally?
GH: As a physician leader it is essential that I stay involved with clinical care. I specifically devote 50% of my time to working in the OR, and that includes taking call, to stay connected to the work environment. Everyone in an academic medical center wears many hats, and we are often pulled in many directions. Of course there’s never enough time, but to maintain credibility with the department’s staff, with surgical and medical colleagues, and most importantly to maintain -credibility with our medical students and residents-in-training there is no substitute for hands-on care of patients.
Q: What does healthcare need more of? Less of?
GH: My experience has mostly been in the academic world, but I’ve also had considerable experience in the private practice sector. The basics are the same in both worlds, and what I’ve often found lacking is alignment of the interests between medical groups and hospitals. In some instances the financial drivers on the institutional side mandate short term strategies at the expense of long-term planning. Healthcare is a chess game, albeit one that sometimes has to be played at a fast pace, but I don’t believe our problems can be resolved by only by looking at quarterly performance. One thing that will help is more training in process improvement. We need to train more of our medical and nursing staffs in how to do this well, and more of it. And at the risk of being painfully obvious, there is an enormous problem with healthcare informatics. The EHR situation is not getting better and the current state is dragging us down. We need a renewed effort in clinical informatics.
The Social and Financial Impacts of the Opioid Epidemic – Thoughts on Reducing Reliance on Opioids
At Becker's 4th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, taking place November 2–5 in Chicago, more than 1,500 hospital and health system executives tackle decisions that determine whether organizations thrive or merely survive: protecting margins under cost pressure, choosing where to grow, renegotiating payer relationships, stabilizing the workforce and proving real ROI on technology. This is where leaders work through them together, face-to-face. Apply for complimentary registration now.
