Accountability is at the heart of execution. What can we do to improve the health
of our heart?As we look back on the previous fiscal year, we’ve seen numerous successes and some areas where we came up short. Increasing collections is one. While overall we had our best financial year ever in MPIP because of various revenue sources , we had a flat year in patient collections. Now there are many reasons for that, but we all prefer results over longwinded explanations.
As Texas Tech Physicians focuses on the current fiscal year, it is good to remember some basic principles in pursuing a healthy heart, so to speak. These have helped me a lot in my more-than-30-year career in health care management.
First, measure everything. No matter how subjective something is, there are ways to measure it. A late friend and former city manager of Fort Worth told me this: what you expect, you inspect. This can be done in a non-offensive way and even helpful way; but we cannot depend on autopilot to fly this plane to our vision of being a top-tier practice in the nation.
Second, assign everything with firm due dates and measurable deliverables. We are all ultimately judged in our work by our outcomes. That is a brutal fact of life that we just have to accept if we want to grow and be successful. A process measurement on paper is not the same as meeting our outcome goal of having 90 percent of the patients seen within 10 minutes of their scheduled appointments for the last quarter. See the difference?
Third, create transparency. Post results for all to see. We publish financial reports in SPIRIT 5. We publish quality reports in SPIRIT 5. Another one of those facts of life is that no one wants to be last — especially when being judged by peers.