Introduction

The healthcare system is highly depending on the physician’s practices. The paper will be based on the study of physicians medical group practices and select the most attractive practice for a newly licensed physician. The changing role of the physician in medical practice over last twenty years will be discussed. The specific challenged to the physicians of the present time in medical group practice will be assessed. Three competencies will be discussed that are significant for a physician to be a successful practice manager. The hurdles that will be faced by the physicians will also be discussed in group practice will also be discussed. The value of Human Resource Management (HRM) will be assessed in medical practice. The functions of HRM to attract and retain the employees for the long term will be discussed. The identification of consumer behavior is an effective approach to develop an effective marketing strategy in medical practice. The three consumer behaviors which are critical for effective marketing strategy will be discussed at the end.

Comparison of the Various Forms of Medical Group Practice:

Multiple medical practice options are available to a newly licensed physician including solo practice, group practice, employed physician practices another practices. Medical group practice is one of an important form of medical practice. The medical group practice is basically divided in two forms including single specialty practice and multi-specialty practice. In the single-specialty practice, two or more physicians provide one specific type of care to the patients’ i.e. particular sub-specialty practice or primary care.  On the other hand, the multi-specialty group practice is based on service of more than one physician in offering different kinds of medical specialty care in an organization.

The newly licensed physician would be better to the single-specialty group practice because single-specialty group practice requires one specific type of care by the providers to the patients. The newly licensed physician is usually less experienced and less trained (Iglehart, 2011).  The less trained physicians should join the single-specialty group where other practitioners might be experienced one particular specialty care and can train the newly licensed personnel in that specialized field. If the newly licensed physician will join the multi-specialty group practice, he might get more exposure about the multiple fields but cannot be specialized in one relevant field. It might add versatility to the experience of a newly licensed physician but it will cause lack of quality practice and experience. This is why single-specialty medical group practice would be more appropriate for the new physician. Secondly, the newly practiced physician will require a specialized experience in one area and single-specialty group practice would be more attractive to provide the relevant experience to him.

Role of the Physician in a Medical Practice changed in the Past Twenty (20) Years:

The role of the physician in medical practice has been changed over the past 20 years. The change has influenced the health care system. The two basic reasons for changing the role of a physician in health care are the changes in technology and the new medical knowledge in the healthcare field. These two factors bring the requirements for changing the role of physicians. The role has changed in various ways. Firstly, the physicians are expected to use of less costly invasive diagnostic procedures instead of noninvasive diagnostic procedures which were highly used in past such as Tomography and Computerized Axial (Wilensky, 2011).  The physicians nowadays are expected to adopt the less radical surgical approach instead of traditional surgeries methodologies followed in past. Infect, radiological treatment and chemotherapeutic are expected from physicians instead of surgery. The physicians nowadays expected to use the telephone, social media and other electronic means for the treatment which was not common in past. The utilization of midlevel practitioners is also changed. Nowadays, physicians have increased the reliance on patients to modify the habits related to health. Physicians promote the health promotion practices instead of reactive approaches and preventive approaches in medicine used in past. Increased number of women physician is a prominent change in current time period.

Being the member of the medical group practicing, the physician faces various challenges. Firstly, the physicians have to deal with increasing operating costs in medical group practice. Secondly, the physician faces the challenge in preparing reimbursement models to share the financial risk in the medical practice. The third challenge is based on the distribution of duties among the group members in shared medical practices to serve the patients (Kash & Tan, 2016).

Specific Competencies:

The physician should possess following three competencies to be a successful practice manager:

Firstly, the physician should know about the job. The basic leader and the best practice manager is the one who knows his job very well. When the manager is new, the team can afford some slack from the leadership side. But within long run, the practice manager is required to be fully competent to perform his job at best and lead the team with best practices to be followed.

The second required competency in a physician to be a successful practice manager is “planning”. The practice manager is required to possess effective skills in planning. Planning is based on the creation of active steps to achieve the desired objectives (Wilensky, 2011).  The physician should possess the skills of planning to be an effective practice manager in order to establish priorities, anticipating requirements and meeting deadlines. The flexibility of the planning is a critical aspect to handle the changes in an effective manner.

 The third competency is implementation skills. The physician as the practice manager needs to formulate efficient implementation strategies which can meet the deadlines of the plans. The implementation skills start from planning, homework, well-motivated team, availability of resources and strategies to implement the action plans.

Three hurdles which a physician might face as a group practice leader are as follow:

The first hurdle is to manage the increasing health care cost in group practice and manage the cost within the assigned budget because the group practice makes it difficult for the budget utilization in individual aspect. The conflicting situations occurred various time. The second hurdle is difficulty in managing technology. Some participants may be efficient to use the technology in healthcare provision while other need training. Managing the team competencies related to technology is a big hurdle for a leader. The third hurdle is the complexity of managing the aspect of collaboration among the team of group practitioners and assesses and adopts the new ideas referred by team members (Zazzali et al, 2007).

Value of Effective Human Resources Management (HRM) in a Medical Practice:

HRM play the significant role in providing value in medical practice. HRM ensure the balance between physical and human resources and ensure that health promoters and caregivers are promoting the system success. Secondly, HRM ensures that cost of health care is appropriately managed. For example, HRM ensures that healthcare practitioners have the availability of medical tools to provide necessary care. HRM initiative also ensures a quality of care by ensuring quality service provision by providers of healthcare. For example, HRM department conducts periodic performance appraisal to ensure providers performance to deliver care. 

Three functions of HRM to attract and retain employees for practice are as follow:

Firstly, HRM offers attractive reimbursement plan for the providers and ensure the smooth flow of cash disbursement to them. Secondly, HRM should plan effective reward system for the organizational workforce to motivate them. Thirdly, HRM will plan the flexible schedule for the group physicians to attract them and retain them for the long term (Kabene et al, 2006).  

HRM is recommended to plan an effective financial cash flow from reimbursement plan so that providers of care can provide quality delivery of care to the patients. HRM efficiency will ensure the successful practice of health care system.

Aspects of Consumer Behavior that the Physician’s Practice Management should consider as Part of an Effective Marketing Strategy for Medical Practices:

Three customers’ behavior that should be considered by physician’s practice management for effective marketing strategy in health care is as follow:

The first aspect of customer behavior is he customers availability in social media platform, mobiles and desktops to ensure their accessibility to informative health contents. the second aspect of customer behaviors is to assess the location-based and demographic targeting of customers behaviors to assess their local needs. The third aspect of customer behavior is based on their word of mouth marketing to expand the healthcare products information (Flynn, et al, 2002). These three behaviors can be effective part of marketing strategy for medical practices.

Conclusion

The revenue of the healthcare industry of US is highly based on the care provided by physicians to the patients. The other sources of revenue from the physicians medical practices include the admitting patients to the hospital, ordering home health services, prescribing prescription medicine, refer medical equipment utilization and referring the patients to healthcare providers for further treatments. The role of physicians is critical in the current healthcare system of United States. The physician’s group-based medical practices are effective for the newly licensed physician. However, physicians face various challenges in grouped medical practices, HRM plays the significant role in creating value in a healthcare system.

References

Flynn, K. E., Smith, M. A., & Davis, M. K. (2002). From physician to consumer: the effectiveness of strategies to manage health care utilization. Medical Care Research and Review, 59(4), 455-481.

Kabene, S. M., Orchard, C., Howard, J. M., Soriano, M. A., & Leduc, R. (2006). The importance of human resources management in health care: a global context. Human resources for health, 4(1), 20.

Kash, B., & Tan, D. (2016). Physician Group Practice Trends: A Comprehensive Review. Journal of Hospital & Medical Management, 2(1).

Iglehart, J. K. (2011). Assessing an ACO prototype—Medicare’s physician group practice demonstration. New England Journal of Medicine, 364(3), 198-200.

Wilensky, G. R. (2011). Lessons from the Physician Group Practice Demonstration—a sobering reflection. New England Journal of Medicine, 365(18), 1659-1661.

Zazzali, J. L., Alexander, J. A., Shortell, S. M., & Burns, L. R. (2007). Organizational culture and physician satisfaction with dimensions of group practice. Health services research, 42(3p1), 1150-1176.