Hospitals in pursuit of excellence

Health Leadership Capacity Development

Four years ago this hospital had no clinical leadership development program. Physician leaders within the organization were primarily volunteer chiefs of services and few contracted medical directors; none of whom had formal leadership training. The voluntary chiefs were unengaged and essentially weakly aligned with the organization. There was little previous effort to develop physician leaders and directors were appointed based on willingness rather than leadership skills. And, like other health systems, this one was inundated with change and facing problems that required adaptive solutions and physician engagement. This inhibited the hospital's ability to be successful in quality measures, safety initiatives, and innovation. Building this adaptive capacity would require a major educational effort, primarily targeting our physicians. Because early efforts proved that short term courses in leadership did not lead to a sustainable solution and proved quite costly, it was decided that physician leadership capacity building could be done in-house with resources that currently exist. This would not only cut cost but had the added value of convenience for the instructors, facilitators and students.