In today’s health care space, tracking progress and achieving specified metrics are all part of the job. Most fast-paced physician groups incentivize clinicians for efficiency, consistency, quality, and loyalty. Setting and achieving goals, although it might sound somewhat cliche, can play an important role in daily performance, as well as have an impact on long-term satisfaction with an HM career, according to experts in the field.
“Health care insurers and individuals choosing where to obtain health care want evidence that hospitalists are delivering the best care possible,” says Judith S. Treharne, consulting executive at Halley Consulting Group in Westerville, Ohio. “This requires goal setting, measuring performance related to those goals, and continually developing processes that enhance performance in order to achieve goals.”
Hospitalists are at the forefront of healthcare transformations taking place both inside the hospital and when patients are discharged to different settings. The opportunities for setting goals – personal and group-wide – are endless.
Dr. Amir Jaffer
“If hospitalists want to see their careers evolve with these changes, it’s important for them to set goals for their career growth,” says Amir K. Jaffer, MD, MBA, SFHM, chief medical officer at New York Presbyterian Queens Hospital in New York City.
For employed hospitalists, goal setting – and achievement – can counter career stagnation, says Sanjay Bhatia, MD, FHM, CDIP.
“They show up, do a job, and go home. Many are not encouraged to develop their careers,” says Dr. Bhatia, chief medical officer, Prime Healthcare–Lower Bucks Hospital, Bristol, Pa.; founding partner, First Docs/Mercer Bucks Medical, Levittown, Pa.; and CEO/president, Prime Clinical Solutions, Freehold, N.J.
Dr. Sanjay Bhatia
Setting goals will help hospitalists establish skill sets and achieve accomplishments that will keep their career growth on track, adds Surinder Yadav, MD, SFHM, vice president of hospital medicine at Emeryville, Calif.–based CEP America, a national organization specializing in acute-care staffing, including hospitalist, intensivist, and emergency medicine programs.
when someone consistently reaches their goals (that is, improving outcomes) and feels accomplished, it enhances engagement of their work, says Treharne, who advises hospitalist groups.
Determine, pursue goals
There are many reasons why goal setting is important. So what guidelines can a hospitalist use to set goals? In order to establish goals for your current role, Treharne advises reviewing your job description – which should be updated as your role evolves.
“Determine what you need to do in order to progress toward meeting these requirements,” she says. “Find out what resources are available to support your efforts.”
Regarding setting career goals, Dr. Jaffer says hospitalists should consider things that really move them.
“For hospitalists in the early stages of their careers, it may take some time to determine them,” he says. “But when a passion develops, hospitalists can identify opportunities which will allow them to create a niche for themselves or an area of expertise.”
Then, hospitalists can work with individuals within their organization and beyond to increase their expertise.
“Find one or more mentors, take educational courses or even pursue an advanced degree, and write about your area of expertise either by publishing articles or abstracts, giving poster presentations, or lecturing,” Dr. Jaffer advises. “That will establish you as an expert and lead to promotions.”
Dr. Bhatia believes it’s natural and important for hospitalists to pursue administrative roles and become experts on how hospitals and post–acute care facilities work, because they transition patients to these institutions and they employ hospitalists. He has also seen hospitalists pursue entrepreneurial goals, such as becoming involved in information technology by developing apps or becoming C-suite executives, and starting other medical-based businesses such as home-based physician visits and telemedicine ventures and even nonmedical-based businesses such as real estate investing. Another avenue is teaching residency programs and developing an academic career.
“The key is to have good teammates, partners, and ancillary staff in each endeavor,” Dr. Bhatia says. “You can learn a lot from them as well. My experiences beyond being a hospitalist make me very valuable as a hospitalist. I’ve found that varied experiences create a synergistic and value-added service to a hospital.”
Stay on target
In order to reach your goals, Dr. Bhatia recommends creating daily task lists as well as setting goals quarterly and annually and evaluating them at those intervals. Determine action steps to reach long-term goals. “I keep these lists on my smartphone, so they’re always in my mind’s eye,” he says. “I look at the big picture on a daily basis and work toward my goals.”
In an effort to help faculty members reach their goals, Dr. Jaffer, when he was a division director at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, scheduled biannual professional reviews with each team member. It was a formal process adapted from the annual professional review that he learned while at the Cleveland Clinic. Members were asked to complete a faculty self-reflection assessment and answer questions such as: