4 Ways Health Execs Can Engage Providers

While it is difficult work, provider engagement is attainable. Here are some strategies that health systems can use to successfully engage their physicians.

Provider engagement is fundamental for the success of a health system. Engagement involves a strategy that leads to a stable relationship between physicians and health systems.

There must be a top-down commitment to engagement. Leadership must establish the culture and create an action plan that results in engagement. Providers must adapt to new concepts, including value-based care models, and be meaningfully included in the process, beginning with discussions and through to implementation.

“An organization can benefit from a plan to engage its physicians proactively,” says Clint MacKinney, MD, MS, associate clinical professor at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. “Physicians will determine the success.”

In the physician-patient relationship, engagement provides an opportunity to implement clinically appropriate and efficient processes to improve care.

“We want to be engaged,” says Ralph J. Nobo Jr, MD, a Physicians Foundation board member. “It’s very frustrating when we can’t be fully engaged.”

While MacKinney acknowledges that while it is difficult work, provider engagement is attainable. Here are some strategies that health systems can use to successfully engage their physicians.