Critique the Fischer and Robeznieks articles. Evaluate their appropriateness for use in a doctoral-level research paper. This paper should demonstrate strong critical thinking.
Herding academic cats: Still OneSearch – A.T. Still University
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http://eds.b.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=2&sid=d765ebed-9491-…
Title: Herding academic cats. By: Robeznieks, Andis, Modern Healthcare, 01607480, 5/11/2015, Vol. 45, Issue 19
Database: CINAHL Plus with Full Text
Herding academic cats
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Engaging doctors is key to teaching hospital reforms
It’s a tough challenge to engage academic physicians in managing the health of an enrolled patient population.
Doctors traditionally have been trained to deal with the patient in front of them. Changing their focus to population health requires a
different mindset. That’s even more true for academic medical center doctors, who are steeped in teaching hospital traditions, or who
may see clinical operations merely as a backup funding source for their research and education missions.
But some academic medical center leaders are finding innovative ways of working with their doctors to make their organizations more
competitive in today’s cost-conscious healthcare market. They are also getting their faculty physicians to collaborate with communitybased doctors in new payment and delivery models such as accountable care organizations.
Joe Landsman, CEO of the 600-bed University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, said involving physicians in all major
strategies and change processes is key. That collaboration has enabled his center to implement its clinical standardization and qualityimprovement efforts. “It really starts with development of physician leaders,” said Landsman, whose operation includes 615 doctors, of
whom only 158 are medical center employees.
A critical component has been his center’s Physician Leadership Academy. It began as a 10-month educational program developed in
partnership with the University of Tennessee business school that physicians attended for a half day each month. It has since evolved
into a three-year program. “It gives them a wider base of knowledge than the world they live in, on the state of the industry and why
transformation is necessary,” Landsman said.
He said his center has spurred physicians to take the lead in its standardization and improvement efforts, and touts the center’s 94th
percentile ranking last year in the Press Ganey survey of physician engagement. Press Ganey describes physician engagement as
doctors’ appraisal of their work environment, emotional experiences and workplace attachment.
The nation’s academic medical centers are stressed as payment rates are under pressure, funding for medical research has decreased
and funding for graduate medical education is being threatened. Some experts say shifting academic medical centers’ focus to
population-health management has to be a big part of the answer. And academic center leaders say involving doctors is key to this shift.
“Academic medicine is well positioned to be a part of the solution to the next generation of healthcare delivery,” said Mark Laret, CEO of
UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco. “But it also has to overcome some of its longstanding traditions about how it has carried out that
work. Those traditions are sometimes costly, oftentimes inefficient, and oftentimes are physician and learner-centered, not patientcentered.”
The cultural change required to get physicians to buy into standardization shouldn’t be underestimated, said Dr. Andrew Ziskind,
managing director of Huron Healthcare consultants. “What typically makes academic physicians renowned is what they do differently,”
he said. Standardization reduces those differences.
Dr. David Nash, founding dean of the Jefferson School of Population Health in Philadelphia, calls population-health management “the
road to redemption” for academic medical centers. “Progressive, leading academic medical centers are reading the writing on the wall
and are building or modifying their education program to focus on these issues,” he said.
The hard part, however, is that population health is a team sport involving collaboration among different types of providers and staff, and
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Herding academic cats: Still OneSearch – A.T. Still University