Healthcare Leadership Can Mean

Only One Thing… and it’s NOT

Obamacare or “Lean” Management

Thirty years of healthcare and medical practice-development have led me to conclude that some doctors, many therapists and most nurses get it! They understand that healthcare and healthcare leadership is personal, professional and passionate.

Sadly, a great many healthcare business executives and a good number of providers have sidetracked themselves into thinking that HEALTHCARE is all about slogans, smiling doctor billboards, malpractice insurance fees and reimbursement battles.

Reckless opinionated media “reporting” has drawn healthcare providers and business managers into a tangle of confusion. Talking heads thrive on using every opportunity to convolute issues, stir up doubt, be confrontational, and aggrandize politicians who support their network bosses and stockholders. It’s all a game, and we the people are losing.

Increasingly, government political (and more quietly, insurance company) empty suits are playing God. They are continually trying to convince the world that they are answering the call for qualified healthcare leadership. They, after all, proclaim to know more than we do about what diagnostic, treatment, and doctor choice decisions are best for each of us and our families.

They can live in Nevada and pretend to understand what healthcare is about in New Jersey or Tennessee or Maine. I don’t think so! They’re just protecting their own political profiles, pursuits and plans. And many top healthcare executives simply add fuel to the fire by talking and acting like healthcare is simply a maze of administrative or operational management techniques, methods, or styles that they alone have the answers to.

Well, guess what? Reality Check:

HEALTHCARE IS ABOUT PEOPLE!

You’re healthy, you want to stay healthy. You’re sick, you want to get healthy. That’s it! What part of “get and stay healthy” is so hard to understand?

What are all these other hocus-pocus theories, political scams, new tech apps, insurance deals, Congressional posturing, and media “findings” but diversionary tactics? Is it or is it not “dancing around the issues” in an attempt to look good, or to make money, or to win votes . . . instead of just sitting down and solving the damn problem?

Healthcare professionals justifiably rely heavily on emerging technology and associated improvements in methodologies like the “Lean” management fad. But (and this is a big but) . . . BUT these are only tools. In the wrong hands, even a hammer can miss driving nails.

The bottom line is that leadership in healthcare

means stepping up to more than a diagnostic or

treatment provider role. It means having an

Advocacy Attitude . . . being on the patient’s side!

Imagine if every encounter a patient or patient family had with a healthcare provider could be –as was recently noted here in exemplary fashion by Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute provider and provider support staffers– a remarkable, high-five, bend-over-backwards experience . . . professional providers and caregivers acting like advocates on behalf of each patient and family!

Imagine if every patient and patient family could be trained in advance of every provider diagnostic or treatment exam to better manage anxiety. My best guess is that 3-4 minutes of every doctor exam are consumed with getting the patient to relax. With a 12-minute per patient insurance company limit imposed on the doctor in order to be reimbursed, that leaves 8-9 minutes to diagnose or treat . . . none of which ordinarily go well when distress is present. This is not rocket science. It is not a Madison Avenue branding campaign. It is not politics. It is reality.

Done correctly, these solutions cost nothing but initial investments in time and energy and perhaps some coaching. What’s the expected result? More accurate diagnostic readings and better receptivity to treatments. Happier patients and patient families (whose testimonials to others increase volume and referrals), improved staff teamwork, happier provider and staff and their families (who benefit from “take home” method values). Even happier insurance providers.

So, if skills, training and experience are all present, the “tipping point” factor comes full circle back to, yes, bedside manners!

It’s the “CARE” in HEALTHCARE!

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 DOCTORS, THERAPISTS,

PRACTICE MANAGERS

 HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES

. . . ARE NOT

CORPORATE MUCKITY-MUCKS

You and your practice or facility are not likely to be a Fortune 500 corporate entity. So there’s no need to pretend being a marketing guru.

In fact, if you are feeling even a little bit over your head with marketing, you’re likely to be wasting money, time, and energy!

Maybe you’re unearthing a monster budget expense at the behest and/or persuasion of some big-time marketing company, PR firm or ad agency you’re working with or thinking of hiring? It can often feel (and be real) that such entities are simply throwing away your money to create a mumbo-jumbo branding program aimed at earning an award for themselves.

If you’re working with or considering  “experts” who are trying or promising to “position” you as the brightest star in the heavens . . . you may want to re-think it with a dose of reality.

Reality? Yes, you are a healthcare provider. That makes you an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs challenge the system. In healthcare, they use (or retain) innovative thinking to establish, re-establish and upgrade the authenticity of themselves and the “saleability” of their services, careers, investments, and reputations.

You can accomplish this with: much less expense of money, the same expense of time, and sometimes greater expense of energy. Oh, and –by the way– having and practicing a sense of entrepreneurial reality tends to get far better value and results than engaging one of the “big-time-expert” groups noted above.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page here, I’m talking about –specifically– how to increase patient volume, how to stimulate patient and patient-family loyalty, and how to strengthen referral bases, channels, and networks without having to bet the farm!. Is that what you’re looking to accomplish?

Stay with me on the next few weekly blog posts and I’ll tell you HOW… or call or email me (info below) if you can’t wait!

Let’s start with the idea that what truly “sells” people is to be entirely focused on them and not on ourselves. Chest-beating, posturing messages about how great you think you are and smiling-face billboards, ads, and Facebook pages –regardless of expense involved– make no difference whatsoever. In fact, they often do the opposite… annoy, antagonize, create doubt and distrust, and send the people you’re trying to reach galloping off to your quiet competitors.

So do you have to be “quiet”? No, but you do need to be your authentic self. You do you need to be more conscious of the training and talent and experience gifts you deliver in your vital societal role as a healer and healthcare provider. Because THAT is your best marketing!

Is that hard? Of course, especially given the volatility, misdirection, intrusiveness, and mismanagement of government agencies, insurance companies, and today’s Obamacare circus, but –in the end– difficulty (as most entrepreneurs learn) is a choice.

There is much more coming to you at this blog in the hands-on, specific-how-to-steps departments in the days ahead. So, do return for more on how to get started and how to re-start.

In the meantime . . .

CHECK THIS disarmingly true, insightful post

at www.HealthcareTalentTransformation.com  

by David Lee Scher, MD, titled:

“Five Ways Physicians Can Change Patient Behavior“

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Healthcare Pros STILL

Flushing Money Down the Drain!

Thanks for your visit. We have recently relocated to Cookeville Tennessee (between Nashville and Knoxville), home of Tennessee Tech University. Return here often for new posts in this series for Doctorpreneurs©and Healthcare professionals.

Why not just open the window and throw your money out? Why bother spending it on meaningless, confused thinking about marketing? Why keep feeding the nonperformance of media, mobile apps, direct mail magazines and newsletters, social media and, oh yes, outdoor advertising? Can we look at this open-mindedly?

The business and sports worlds have fed your fires since childhood that you must be competitive at all costs in order to win… that’s 100% false for healthcare professionals! In fact, many healthcare pros have marketing success expectations as unrealistic as imagining that a heart attack can be treated with a BandAid®

REALITY: No one “buys” billboards with smiling doctor faces (or, even worse, the recent trend toward somber looks!). Most people are not so stupid as to think that hospital “magazines” and “newsletters” with feature (dressed-up PR) stories are interesting or meaningful enough to be worth reading. My guess is that –other than the few and far between genuine healthcare educational mailing pieces– most of these exorbitantly expensive items go straight to the recycle pail. All this nonsense came and went thirty years ago. [Interesting how America’s healthcare institutions are accelerating these feeble old-fashioned attempts at marketing. Is it some kind of knee-jerk attempt to cope with the Obamacare muddle?]

BOTTOM LINE: No one cares! The public simply doesn’t care how great hospitals, doctors, therapists (or any professionals for that matter) think they are! Healthcare consumers may have more (and more personal) issues on the line than other kinds of consumers, but they really and truly only care about the same thing that every consumer cares most about: What’s in it for me? Period.

So if you’ve read this far, perhaps it would be useful to explore and reassess your current “marketing” practices, and decide if your money could be better spent on strengthening patient, patient family, and referral network relations. If you’re looking for a role model institution, consider the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center… you’ll find no shallow representations of professional skills… “Treatment” is their specialty, and it applies to everyone who enters their doors. Oh, and guess what? The only expense is training and training maintenance time.

Marketing –if it’s done right– might sometimes succeed at building brand loyalty for some products and services in some markets and marketplaces. But when the two end-results people seek most from healthcare professionals are 1) Reassurance and 2) Trust, it’s not likely either will ever be achieved with empty images or promises.

Doctorpreneurs© Copyright Hal Alpiar, 1994. All rights reserved.

BandAid® is a Registered Trademark of the Johnson & Johnson Company

 # # #

“Got here safe & sound, Y’all!”

AND STILL UNPACKING AND SETTING UP NEW OFFICES . . .

GUESS WHERE?????  Email your guess: Hal@Businessworks.US  (“New Office” in Subject Line) Winning guesses entered in drawing for a FREE first edition signed copy of HIGH TIDE fictionalized account of America’s biggest drug deal! See www.HighTideNow.com

Thank you for your visit.

If you’re new to this blog, please mark your calendar to return on April 16th for the beginning of Tax Return Recovery, and to help kickoff an exciting new series of posts you won’t find anywhere else!

If you’ve been visiting here regularly since the birth of my blog in April, 2008 (and now closing in on 1500 posts), thank you even extra!

You, especially, will want to return April 16th to see what’s in store for innovative, spirited business and healthcare professionals. You’ll get  proven new ways of thinking to boost your sales and make the most of your leadership skills — for profit and nonprofit businesses and professions alike. You’ll get coaching that works in the office and meeting room, on the phone and on paper, on the smartphone and the computer. You will get specific how-tos for building and enhancing your leadership posture in your industry, your marketplace, and your community.

When you return here April 16th, you will get the beginning of an input stream that no one else dares to share . . . on ways to feel better about your SELF (no product or service sales pitches, no lectures, no gimmicks). You’ll get ways to be encouraged, ways to make a difference with your career and family pursuits, ways to rise above the clutter.

You’ll get solid substance based on more years of experience than you probably are old. Not just passive observations, you’ll get frontline/hands-on experience with over 2,000 business consulting and return engagements AND with more than 20,000 students and management training participants. PLUS –as incredible as it’s always been–it will be free on this blog. Try it. You’ll like it. Send your friends.

In the meantime, to better serve our Entrepreneurial Clients (Including Business Startups, SalesPropreneurs©, Doctorpreneurs© and Corporate Entrepreneurs©), BUSINESSWORKS.US and TheWriterWorks.com, LLC will be in the process of relocating to another State. You’ll get the details as soon as we’re settled. In the meantime, Happy Spring!

See you the day after taxes!!!

 # # #

 STOP TURNING OFF LIGHTS

AND START SELLING!

Reality: The economy still sucks, and no amount of government or media mumbo jumbo will change that. We are sunken into knee-deep muck in the worst of economic quagmires. Yet entrepreneurs continue to rise and fall with the sun as they position themselves to save every dollar possible.

But saving money doesn’t make money.

ONLY SALES MAKE MONEY! ONLY! SALES!

In other words, being thrifty is good, but being thrifty will not end the revenues nightmare, so adjust your spotlight. to focus on what’s important. 3 things:

1) STAY IN THE PRESENT “HERE & NOW” MOMENT AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY HOUR OF EVERY DAY.

2) INVEST IN YOUR SALES EFFORT.

3) MANAGE YOUR STRESS & TIME TO BE MOST PRODUCTIVE.

If you can’t do all three of these, quit trying to jamb your corporate or government brain into running a small business, and –instead– go flip burgers, sort mail, or get into politics. Anyone with some energy and half a brain can be a superstar in one of those roles.

Being successful as an entrepreneur takes gigantic amounts of gumption, endless hours of devotion to an idea, and willingness to take reasonable risks (which, contrary to popular myth, does NOT include “betting the farm”). It requires enormous sacrifice of family time and attention and the ability to ignite innovative thinking in a heartbeat!

No, it’s not a career for everyone. Mostly, because it’s not really a career. It’s a lifestyle. Entrepreneurs don’t shut down at 5pm, they don’t sleep and party all weekend, they don’t gamble or buy lottery tickets more than one or two a month, they don’t over-analyze, they take action and make ongoing adjustments and keep moving forward.

Entrepreneurs are passionate and inspired about what they believe is possible, and that overrides fear of falling or running off a cliff. They don’t get breaks in life. They make them. And they are needed now more than ever. This economy will NEVER turn around because of government. It will only turn IN SPITE OF government.

Government, after all, is what put us in the position of having to worry about saving money instead of earning money. Government is the instrument of uncertainty and the pile-driver that continually forces small business to take steps backward. The SBA? That’s a joke. SBA Advisory Boards are comprised of corporate executives!

So bottom line: Entrepreneurship requires internal spirit to start up and fan the fires of small business success. The road is always rocky. The quest has to rise above all else. But for those who have what it takes, they will leave their mark, and they will drive the economy back to reality. Encourage and support those who fight that good fight!

 # # #

 Healthcare is NOT About

Billboards of Smiling Doctors

 . . . So STOP the nonsense and STOP wasting money!

STOP your healthcare marketing long enough to seriously

ask yourself if your public messages really make sense.

Healthcare is and has always been all about TRUST. Nothing more. Nothing less. Doctors and medical groups and hospitals and therapists and chiropractors and dentists and veterinarians who run smiling (or threatening) branding messages on billboards (or in print, online, and broadcast media) are wasting time and money!

Healthcare professionals are wasting their money. 

But they are wasting our time.

Huh? Why? Because NOBODY CARES!

The public today is not the public of yesterday – literally! We are no longer just Internet-savvy. We are Internet-addicted, Internet-crazed, and Internet-bamboozled. We are being micro-chipped to death!

• Healthcare DOWNside: Rampant Google-dependency and new strains of attention deficit disorder.
• Healthcare UPside: We can now know more about our ailments, disorders, symptoms, diagnostic and treatment procedures than ever before. And we can know it in a heartbeat.

Much of the problem lies with healthcare professionals who think they can knock out effective branding programs because they watch TV (or surf the Net, or read blogs, newspapers and magazines) and that makes them experts! But truly effective and memorable branding programs require special skill sets too . . . and those seldom parallel professional healthcare training. Creating marketing that works is not a hobby.

Oh, and if you are a healthcare marketing person, agency, group, or consultant: Before you jump up and down and run off copies of this post to pass around to support your credibility, STOP!

You may well be the other part of the problem!

• Are you selling healthcare professionals on printing and mailing expensive magazines that no one reads or cares about?
• Are you trying to package healthcare services and market them like hot dogs, popcorn, and underwear?
• Are you pushing email blast campaigns and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn as ways to market healthcare?
• Are you saying: “We’ve got your back, Doc! We’ll make you famous! Patients will be standing in line, breaking down your door?

For a fraction of the money healthcare professionals are now spending on marketing, the right approach to building volume and referrals and growing patient and patient family loyalty needs to be considered. The right approach can reap two to ten times as much success! It starts with a diagnostic workup to generate a healthcare practice history. It ends with treating the practice appropriately to achieve the most positive prognosis imaginable.

It’s based on ways to build and increase trust levels, decrease and make the most of stress levels, enhance every level of communications, and make the best -most humanly possible- use of time each day with each patient, patient family, and referral source, as well as ensure proper EMR use and full reimbursement compliance.

It takes time and patience to get and keep patients — not fancy, ineffective and expensive marketing.

 # # #

 GUESS WHAT?  You don’t need

January 2014 to think NEW!

Seriously? Just because the new year has begun is no reason to start thinking about new business directions and goals. You can do that ANY time. It’s called attitude adjustment, and I’m not talking about some happy hour event.  It’s a fact that every one of your behaviors is your choice.

It may not be a conscious or present-moment choice. It may be the result of something you choose subconsciously (or “unconsciously” as scientists now define the phenomena) and may therefore be a choice you don’t recall or claim you never made, but the truth will out!

You chose your every behavior (and attitude)

and continue to make those choices every day.

So, what’s with the calendar programming? Many of the most successful businesses in the world were conceptualized or began or expanded or were revitalized in months other than January. I’m not suggesting you ditch your New Year’s brainstorm. I am simply saying it’s your choice to not limit your “NEW” thinking to any time period.

Playing the odds that your competitors are also planning some kind of new year launch right now can set you up for taking the best path to stand out from the pack — by planning to not be part of the pack. Any new business activities you kick off in January or start planning in January can get lost in the hubbub.

Besides, delaying your target date helps ensure you get it right. Being first is not always being successful.

Are you choosing to put undue stress on yourself? You can just as easily choose to make the implementation of your decisions be easy. In other words, it’s just as easy to choose for something (including a new product or service launch, a revitalization program start date, or a new business launch) be easy as it is to choose for it to be hard!

It’s your choice.

and

you become what you think about!

When you choose to push yourself and others to get something done by some imagined deadline, you are choosing increased stress for yourself and all involved. Stress is not always bad, but when stress turns into DIStress, emotional, mental and physical health become threatened. Choose courageously, but choose carefully.

It’s like driving cross country: stay alert!

# # #

God Bless You and Happy,

Healthy. Peaceful 2014!

# # #

“Huh? Now? But it’s the holidays!”

“Well, Merry Christmas to you! But

after quality family time, remember

1st quarter 2014 is just hours away.”

Why “NOW!”? Just click here: take a quick look at this to see what’s happening this very split second —as you read this— and you’ll realize that delaying this task is simply not in your best interest.

Getting others to refer you/your business is more than a survival tactic, it’s the key to 2014 success. No sales are more important right now than those to the friends, families, associates and online connections of your existing customers, clients, and patients. Because 2014 is bringing increased competitive activity to the surface. And it cannot be sidestepped.

The harder the times, the fiercer the battle! And the easiest, most economical path to increased sales and customer/ client/ patient repeat-sales-and-visits loyalty is a strengthened referral base. Economical? You decide. It costs nothing to delight those who purchase from you.

Cease and desist all marketing? No. But don’t expand it. Instead, consider shifting gears from reliance on expensive media, to fine-tuning attitudes and cultivating a much more pronounced reputation for integrity than you probably imagined being necessary. 

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Hal@Businessworks.US

O.D.  or  D.O.A. ?

When O.D. (Organizational Development) fails to resuscitate a dying enterprise, there are seldom more than two options to pursue. The first, and most prevalent, is to simply roll the victim organization over and declare it D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival).

The second is more challenging and sings to the accompanyment of opportunities: It’s called O.R. (Organizational Rebirth) and is cornerstoned by an massive infusion of E.L. (Entrepreneurial Leadership).

Every size and type of organization —profit AND nonprofit— comes face-to-face with life-threatening problems at some point (and at least once) in it’s lifetime. Most often, it appears that the malignancy stems from some form of poor management, and more often than not appears to evidence itself as an issue of financial shortcoming.

Example: You can’t run a nonprofit organization that’s not conducting ONGOING fundraising and grant procurement efforts. Regardless of good intentions, without money there’s nothing to run.

When the principals who are involved decide that it’s time  to overhaul, restructure, refurbish, rearrange, rebuild, reinvent . . . go for it! BUT, call it something that organization people can relate to, feel positive about, commit to and enthusiastically support. Ask THEM to brand the project with a name and identity.

It’s the leader’s job to determine the purpose, intent, mission, goals/objectives, strategy, and tactics. It’s the leader’s job to “rally the troops,” motivate and guide, to solicit feedback, to listen 80% of the time. Make-believe leaders push. Real leaders pull!

Remember leaders can delegate authority,

but not responsibility.

When it’s time to choose to fold up or buckle up, don’t choose to make it hard. Don’t choose to make it daunting. Don’t choose to make it more stressful than it may be. Don’t choose to make it overwhelming. Don’t be a drama queen. Don’t be overbearing. Choose instead to think like a leader and act like an entrepreneur.

Reinventing yourself as a person or as an organization doesn’t have to be drudgery or negative or threatening unless you choose it to be. Choose for it to be fun! Choose for it to be easy! Choose for it to be positive! Choose to go with the flow instead of over-analyzing what went wrong.

Choose to keep EVERYTHING

in the “here and now”!

Reality: It’s a far deeper process than changing facepaint. The reinventing-survival experience is rarely a simple one, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and easy. Simply choose –and constantly REchoose to reinforce– for it to be easy and fun. With vigilance, the challenges can turn into opportunities in a blink.

Oh, yes, and it’s okay to blink.

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Hal@Businessworks.US

FACE SMASH

STOP thinking for a minute! STOP analyzing. STOP worrying. STOP strategizing. STOP getting to the bottom of things! It’s ridiculously easy to trip over our own feet the minute we lose touch with where we are. As soon as we start focusing on anything other than what’s right in front of us– where we want to be, for example (or worse, where we’ve already been), we run the risk of face smash!

Every great management leader, expert, book, course, and guru — and, for those with religious leanings, even the Bible– urges us to stay focused on HERE AND NOW as much of the time as possible. The minute we divert attention from that power saw or computer app or steering wheel we’re using, CHOP, CRACKLE, BOOM! Am I just imagining this? No, of course not. It’s reality.

Common sense, huh? But how many of us have the ability to exercise common sense once we’re absorbed with past or future issues which are not here, now, and are therefore actually make-believe? And how much of our “life is short” time gets wasted fantasizing? I’m not talking about dreaming. Every great leader makes time to be a dreamer, but great leaders stay in control. They use dreams.

So how — what steps can we use to prevent many of those lost opportunities? How do great leaders keep from falling on their faces? There are as many answers to this as there are great leaders (and there are many!). But all the contortions aside, it seems to me that it all reduces itself to: What is your trigger p0int?

In other words, what happens to you physically when you spin off into the clouds or fly off the handle or back quietly out the side door? Your stomach growls, you get a stiff neck, feel edgy, jiggle a foot, play with a flash drive, get a headache, or backache, or crave something sweet? Each of us is different. But each of us has a trigger. Talk to yourself about it.

When each of us can identify our own individual, unique trigger point and become aware of it when it surfaces, we immediately put ourselves on the path toward advanced leadership driven by present moment happenings. That’s a GIANT step in the self-control arena. And, guess what? the more you tune in to your SELF and what makes you tick (especially if you’re in sales — and who isn’t?), the happier and healthier you can be — and you won’t need special vitamins or skin products or addictive behaviors to stoke your euphoric fires.

What’s to lose? Give it a try. Start here with this quick 4-STEP life-saver and then move ahead to taking SELF inventory. It’s not just about what’s good for what ails you. It’s about preventing ailments. It’s about doing a better job of being a leader. Oh, and it doesn’t even cost anything! Have a great awakening!

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Hal@Businessworks.US