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SPANNING THREE DECADES OF VALUE MANAGEMENT LEADERSHIP

August 28, 2001

“Circle of Confluence” Strategy

Reduces Clinicians Fear of Change

Push or pull clinicians in the direction of change, and they’ll probably resist.  Embrace them instead and you’ll increase your opportunity for their acceptance of your ideas and recommendations for changes in their methods and practices.  The concept is to build clinicians’ respect and confidence in you.  This sets the stage for effective value analysis.  We recommend an approach we call the “circle of confluence,” which incorporates four C’s: contact, champions, communications and cooperation.

Contact: It’s crucial that you establish regular contract with clinicians through focus groups and surveys to understand their needs and ideas.  But it takes a little more effort to build lasting relationships.  Identify and be active in committees that are central to your clinicians’ deepest interest, such as infection control, the operating room and quality. To prove you are committed to their interests, sponsor in-house seminars on new modalities, procedures and therapies. Grab their attention with seminars on products like silver-coated catheters, which can reduce their patient’s nosocomial infections.

Champions:  Clinicians respect their peers, so cultivate relationships with ones who will champion your causes and lead value teams toward common and mutual goals.  For example, the value analysis process at Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was hugely successful, in part because physicians themselves lead their value teams (that’s right!).

Communications:  Regular communication is fundamental.  It gives clinicians the opportunity to share and digest diverse ideas.  It can also generate new ideas by putting old ones into context. Publish newsletters to keep clinicians fully informed about your philosophies and actions and aware of your sensitivity to their needs.  Ask for the opportunity to present new programs and initiatives at medical staff meetings and luncheons.  Most of all, truly listen when clinicians tell you about their concerns and problems. Then act to resolve them.

Cooperation:  By serving and working with clinicians without expecting anything in return, you’ll build lasting alliances.  For instance, lead the way to facilitate capital equipment requests and resolve product and quality problems.  Combined with contact, champion development and communications this will bring confluence full circle and enable cooperation on common goals and challenges.

The circle of confluence is a continuous process, not a onetime event. Keep the loop closed by continuing to build on the four Cs and you will reduce your clinicians’ fear of change and gain allies in your fight to manage and control your cost and quality.

Robert T. Yokl, President, The HCP Group, Ltd., has over 35 years of experience as a consultant and manager in the field of Supply/Value Chain Management and is one of the country's leading healthcare experts in value analysis, value engineering and materials management. He is the developer and program leader of the award winning Certified Value Analysis Practitioner Training Program™. Mr. Yokl is also the developer of the healthcare industry's leading ValueNetCentral™ Value Analysis Software. Over the past two decades he has trained thousands of healthcare managers in his patented Strategic Value Analysis™ and Team-Based Project Management™ processes and has assisted scores of organizations in developing their own value management programs. He has published six books, videos and audios on supply/value chain management. His latest book being, “ Strategic Value Analysis™: The #1 Smart Strategy for Taking Cost Out of a Healthcare Organizations’ Supply/Value Chain”.