Successfully Execute a Career as a Physician Executive

 

As more hospitals embrace having physicians in the C-suite, physicians may wonder if a career change is right for them. Although many physicians succeed in healthcare management roles, transitioning to one of these roles is not a decision to be made lightly—being a good clinician does not automatically mean you will be a good leader.

 

“I honestly think a lot of medical staff leaders think, ‘I am a respected clinician, I am chair of the department, and all of the stuff that made me a good doc will make me a good physician leader.’ But it just is not true. For example, a lot of leadership skills—collaboration, communication, change management, and conflict management—are essential for successful physician leaders, but medical school and residency training does not prepare them for that. It prepares them to be decisive, autonomous, smart, to make decisions about patients, but not to do much else,” says William K. Cors, MD, MMM, FAAPL, senior medical director for Lehigh Valley Health Network, Lehigh Valley Hospital—Pocono in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

 

According to Peter Angood, MD, president and CEO of the American Association for Physician Leadership (AAPL), this framework of assumptions rather than training is the historical approach to physician leadership, and it needs to change as healthcare itself changes. “At some level, all physicians are leaders, and our society still expects that of the profession. But healthcare is more complicated now, so physicians need added knowledge, skills, training, and experience in order to be effective as a leader and as a manager.”

 

Angood also sees healthcare organizations making the mistakes of the past when it comes to recruiting physician leaders. “There are still several organizations out there who take on that historical approach: you are a good clinician, everyone seems to like you, your patients seem to have good outcomes—congratulations, you are now the CMO. With that kind of approach, the failure rate for those roles is unfortunately much higher than it should be.”

 

So what should an organization or physician do? When a physician expresses interest in a leadership role or a hospital identifies potential leaders, the hospital should provide avenues for those individuals to gain the education and experience they need.

 

According to Angood, only in the past three to five years have organizations and physicians alike realized there is a bigger need for additional education before physicians assume leadership roles. Many organizations now require chief medical officers (CMO) and vice presidents of medical affairs (VPMA) to hold a master’s degree—but this was not always the case.

 

Cors became medical staff president at his primary hospital and soon realized he had little idea what he was doing outside his traditional clinical role. To overcome this knowledge deficit, he started by enrolling in the core coursework of the AAPL. He then became CMO at another hospital. The need for new and expanded skills was evident, and he decided to use AAPL core course credits toward a Master of Medical Management (MMM) degree as well as completing the AAPL Certified Physician Executive (CPE) program. When he obtained his MMM degree in 2002, a master’s degree for physician executives was still considered optional.

 

“Going forward, every job after that, it was a given that if you didn’t have some set of management letters after your medical degree, don’t bother going for it,” says Cors.

Todd A. Meyerhoefer, MD, MBA, CPE, FACS, VPMA and CMO for Union Hospital in Dover, Ohio, took the opposite approach to leadership education.

 

“My dad was a pediatrician who practiced for 25 years and when he retired, he went into administrative medicine. So I had him as my role model,” Meyerhoefer says. “When I got out in the field, I always found the business aspect of medicine to be interesting. [My dad’s] advice to me was to volunteer for committee work, so I started with that.

 

“As I got more involved, one thing my dad pointed out to me, if I wanted to do more administrative work, I should get an advanced degree. He suggested I get my MBA—besides helping me understand the business aspect of it, it also shows a level of commitment,” says Meyerhoefer. He also earned the CPE credential, again to differentiate himself from other physician leaders.

 

When it comes to advanced degrees, common ones that physicians obtain include:

“I think you need to get an advanced degree if you are really going to do this,” says Jeffery Jensen, DO, MPH, MBA, VPMA at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Florida. “If you are doing it at age 63 as you are transitioning and the hospital has a role for you, no, you are not going to go out and get an advanced degree. But if you are in your 40s and you have a yearning to do this, you should get your advanced degree—MHA, MBA, MPH—all of them give you many of the skills you will need.”

 

Jensen was in his late 40s when he earned his MBA. At the time, he was still practicing medicine full-time and not thinking about a career in administration. However, his healthcare-focused MBA courses made him interested in how healthcare runs and how it is managed from the business side. After earning his MBA, he immediately enrolled in a MPH program.

 

“As we start to think about population, if you put the two degrees together, you need the business side to understand how costs are driven on the healthcare side, but the MPH gives you population-based management. The two kind of feed off of each other,” says Jensen.

 

He adds that the MPH degree works better for those in an insurance role that is population-based, while the MBA/MHA are better for those in an acute care setting.