What it’s all about
The leadership skills of practice owners are of crucial importance for future-oriented GP and specialist practice management. It ensures that employees work together as “real” teams in a motivated, efficient, flexible and successful manner and can thus proactively respond to developments in the practice’s operating environment. But how future-oriented are the futurised practices (which represent a perspective expansion of the best practice standard) of GPs and specialists today? An evaluation of the results of practice management comparisons provides information.
Medical leadership in the benchmarking test
Looking at the current Leadership Materialisation Score of German GP and specialist practices (LMS, use of management tools compared to the Futurised Practice Standard), this key performance indicator amounts to 42% (optimum: >80%). This means that over 50% of the regulations, behaviours and tools that are essential for the smooth and future-oriented functioning of a practice are not being used.
The deficits begin with a lack of vision and extend to employee motivation, communication and decision-making skills in the entrepreneurial area of practice activities, delegation behaviour, willingness to resolve conflicts and soft skills such as emotional intelligence or resilience.
The consequences for cooperation
One of the most important negative consequences of this inadequate leadership is reflected in collaboration. The Teamwork Quality Score (TQS) can be derived from this by comparing the basic requirements for optimally functioning, perspective-orientated collaboration as a team with employee satisfaction with these parameters. The figure currently stands at 47%. Collaboration that falls into this area characterises groups. They are characterised by a lack of synergy between individual activities: people work together, but only within the framework that has been set. Personal initiative or helping out with problems are rare. Collaboration is also often characterised by unresolved conflicts. Although every medical assistant endeavours to perform their tasks well, there is no sustained commitment to continuous improvement. At the same time, this reduces the intensity of the employees’ commitment to the practice, a fact that also has a negative effect in a time of a shortage of skilled labour.
Conclusion
The results of the Futurised Practice-Check in German medical practices show clear deficits in the leadership skills of practice owners. There is therefore an urgent need for action to improve leadership skills in German medical practices and to promote successful and future-orientated collaboration.
Further reading
- Grol, R., Wensing, M., & Eccles, M. (2005). Improving patient care: The implementation of change in clinical practice. [1]
- Lega, F., & Sartirana, M. (2016). Leadership in practice: Literature review and interview perspectives.
- Decker, P., Durand, R., Mayfield, C. O., McCormack, C., Skinner, D., & Perdue, G. (2012). Predicting implementation from organizational and physician leadership for electronic health records in ambulatory care.
- Battilana, J., Gilmartin, M., Sengul, M., Pache, A. C., & Alexander, J. A. (2010). Leadership competencies for implementing planned organizational change.
- Greenfield, D., Travaglia, J., Nugus, P., & Braithwaite, J. (2007). Health sector accreditation research: A systematic review.
- Cramm, J. M., Strating, M. M., & Nieboer, A. P. (2014). The role of team climate in improving the quality of chronic care delivery: A longitudinal study among professionals working with chronically ill adolescents in the Netherlands.
- Mosadeghrad, A. M. (2014). Essentials of healthcare organization and management.
- Shortell, S. M., & Kaluzny, A. D. (2006). Health care management: Organization design and behavior.
- Gittell, J. H. (2009). High performance healthcare: Using the power of relationships to achieve quality, efficiency and resilience.
- Sturmberg, J. P., & Lanham, H. J. (2014). Understanding health care delivery as a complex system.
R2049 