This post was contributed by Louis J. Goodman, PhD, CAE, Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer of the Texas Medical Association (TMA) and a board member of The Physicians Foundation, and Lawrence Downs, Esq., Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Society of New Jersey (MSNJ) and Secretary of the Physicians Foundation.
The evidence is mounting that medical practice is under siege by a barrage of unrelenting rules, regulations and requirements that have little bearing on achieving the best outcome for the patient. A research center collaboration just launched by The Physicians Foundation and Weill Cornell Medical Center aims to do something about that.
The Physicians Foundation Center for the Study of Physician Practice and Leadership at Weill Cornell Medicine (CPPL) will identify challenges practicing physicians face and identify solutions to help them provide high quality and high value care to their patients. “The research we will pursue will positively impact the way in which physicians practice medicine and will result in better care for patients,” says CPPL Director, Lawrence Casalino, MD, PhD, MPH.
CPPL’s core researchers will come from the full-time faculty members of the Department of Healthcare Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. In addition to the expertise available from Weill Cornell Medical College, the center will engage authorities from New York Presbyterian Hospital, Cornell University and leading figures at other universities and healthcare organizations throughout the United States.
Physician leadership, physician time and physician professionalism are vital factors in high quality patient care. Rapid changes in federal and state health policy and regulation, as well as consolidation among health insurers and hospitals are exerting great pressure on physicians. The research center’s goals are to improve patient care through research and writing intended to lead to increased physician leadership in healthcare organizations, better use of physician time, enhanced physician professionalism, and higher physician professional satisfaction.
CPPL will provide an innovative way to conduct important research projects simultaneously and will have the flexibility to respond to the rapidly changing U.S. healthcare policy environment. The center’s approach will involve creation of a “data core” that comes from physicians and the organizations in which they work. It also will generate data that can be used to measure the quality and cost of care, from Medicare claims data, as well as the six billion claims in the Healthcare Cost Institute database of claims for commercially insured and Medicare Advantage patients.
Physicians and physician practices are at the center of healthcare. Virtually all healthcare services that patients receive are provided or ordered by a physician. Patients rely on physician professionalism as a promise that the physician always will act in the patient’s best interest, even when third parties — insurers, government or hospitals — make this difficult. Alarming numbers of physicians report being burned out and/or state that they would not recommend a career as a physician to friends or family.
Policymakers and funders of research give surprisingly little attention to physicians and physician practice. Government policies are frequently adopted without consideration of their unintended consequences on physicians. CPPL’s overall intertwined goals are to improve physicians’ work lives, their ability to provide high quality care, patient outcomes and patients’ experience of care through physician leadership.
The Physicians Foundation will further complement the work of CPPL through its long-standing physician leadership programs and soon-to-be-launched physician wellness initiative. Over the past ten years, the Foundation has sponsored an annual physician leadership academy at a major university for state medical society presidents, president-elects and CEOs. The several hundred graduates of the academy will benefit greatly from the work of the Center and, in effect, be ambassadors on behalf of its policy issues and recommendations.
The Physicians Foundation will work with the American Medical Association on a “joy in medicine” initiative and will make grants to state medical societies to offer local education, counseling and programs for physicians experiencing symptoms of burnout.
Clearly, the work of CPPL will undergird the programs of the Physicians Foundation by identifying issues and providing policy and intellectual guidance in addressing the mounting challenges of medical practice.
