Strategic Medical Staff Development Planning: Going Beyond the Numbers

In an April 28 telesiminar, Marc D. Halley, MBA, president and CEO of the Halley Consulting Group, and Ashleigh Finley, MBA, director of business analytics for Halley Consulting Group, explained why hospitals should explore strategic staff development planning as opposed to traditional medical staff development planning. Here are six key concepts for hospital leaders considering this method to better understand their market share and strengthen physician recruitment plans.

1. Understanding the difference between strategic staff development plans and traditional plans. Traditional planning focuses on supply and demand. Strategic planning, however, yields specific recommendations and implementation tactics "Strategic staff development plans are different in both composition and process," said Ms. Finley. One difference is strategic plans include more qualitative data — such as physician surveys, administrator feedback and the involvement of a select workgroup.

2. Developing a strategic plan timeline. Hospitals are recommended to revise their strategic medical development plan every three yeas. "We also recommend you survey physicians annually," says Ms. Finley. While there are often events that trigger the development of a medical staff plan, such as pending recruitments requiring documentation of need, Mr. Halley and Ms. Finley encourage hospitals not to put the cart before the horse.

3. Demographic factors to consider for physician recruitment. When creating medical staff development plans, hospitals should focus on growth rates and establishing a presence where the health system can benefit from anticipated growth. Certain demographic indicators may be helpful for this, such as an area's pediatric population, 55-plus population, women of child-bearing age and areas with lower education levels.

4. Defining the size and scope of a neighborhood. A neighborhood is defined as the geographic area where at least 50 percent of a primary care practice's patients live, typically 3-7 miles around the practice, according to Mr. Halley and Ms. Finley. (This mileage is reflective of an urban or suburban area, as rural areas may have different mileage.) "We've seen central city hospitals enhance their payor mix by placing primary care practices in certain neighborhoods. Others effectively locate and staff practices to serve the uninsured and underinsured. Being first in a brand new neighborhood gives primary care physicians a competitive advantage," said Mr. Halley.

5. The role of the hospital CEO. In strategic planning, primary care physicians can help identify a need for a missing specialty or service line, a specialty with more demand than supply, service quality issues and clinical quality issues. "Hospital CEOs should monitor the referral experience of their employed and independent primary care physicians on an ongoing basis," said Mr. Halley. "This is so important. Today, CEOs have to reach out to primary care physicians in ambulatory settings to meet with them as critical shareholders. Understanding primary care referrals is critical to the development of a sound specialty mix," says Mr. Halley.

6. Ensuring planning elements are not overlooked. Mr. Halley and Ms. Finley identified common aspects of medical staff plans that hospitals take for granted when developing.  Hospitals often overlook the need to survey medical staff and take the accuracy of their physician supply lists data for granted. "There is often more than a 20 percent error rate in the data — sometimes physicians have moved out of the market or retired but they're still listed and factored into the demand calculation," said Ms. Finley. Hospitals should also prioritize a neighborhood's needs, wants and priorities — this should be the starting point for any sound strategic staff development plan.

Hear the archived teleseminar.

Learn more about Halley Consulting Group.

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