Optimizing learning & development investment requires applied expertise and insight
Dr. Jimenez, CEO of SignifyMed, believes the goal in collaboration between a healthcare organization and a managed services firm is to establish synchrony in three key areas:
(1) audits and evaluation
(2) data insights and integration
(3) physician centric learning and development strategy (see table below).
An experienced training partner can supplement a healthcare organization’s capabilities with additional expertise and resources, bridging silos while leveraging the right technology to rapidly and continuously align learning and development with business goals, compliance needs, and the physician learner. The right partner is laser-focused on physician on-the-job performance, organizational impact and ROI, and continuously measuring and fine-tuning the learning and development strategy to maintain alignment in a rapidly changing healthcare environment.
3 KEY AREAS
Audit and training evaluation data are essential elements of effective physician learning and development strategies.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which oversees Medicare compliance, encourages annual self-audits of physicians, targeting areas OIG considers high risk for improper payments or fraud. OIG announces these areas annually, and notifies their provider network to help them focus internal compliance audits, and update local guidelines and training to minimize risk and improper payments. It is also important to regularly evaluate training delivered using comprehensive models to fully understand training impact (reaction, knowledge, behavior, business outcomes, ROI), to guide ongoing efforts and update the learning and development strategy.
Comparative and predictive analytics, alerts, and performance reporting data (quality, patient satisfaction, productivity).
Gaining access to all available physician data, and having the right expertise to understand and integrate this data with the learning and development strategy, is another key area. It includes accounting for clinical applications that generate or collect clinical documentation as part of information governance, and documentation compliance. Too often the learning and development strategy is not plugged into this data, missing a powerful opportunity to make training more meaningful.
Physician-centric strategies must account for opportunities (wealth of data) and challenges (lack of time, frustration, change).
All employees play an important role within a healthcare organizations, but physicians drive the majority of the cost and quality decisions at the point of care, and personal spending on healthcare [1]. Frustration and burn-out are high due to increasing regulatory and paperwork burden and the erosion of clinical autonomy. 80% of physicians are at capacity or overextended, 21% of their time is spent on nonclinical paperwork, and only 14% have the time they need to provide the highest standards of care [2]. A physician-centric learning and development strategy must align with the organization’s business objectives, and enables agile response to audit and evaluation findings, and adapts to the changing landscape. Just as importantly, it leverages data to boost relevance and minimize wasted time.
REFERENCES
[1] https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Health-Costs-Absorb-One-quarter-of-GDP-growth-Release-ch%E2%80%A6.pdf
[2] http://www.physiciansfoundation.org/healthcare-research/physician-survey
