Improving healthcare team performance: 8 essential tenets

As medical group practices face rising labor costs, staffing shortages, and strained resources, it is crucial that they ensure clinical, financial, and operational teams function at a high level to maintain quality patient care. When healthcare professionals work together as a team, they can streamline processes and workflows, reducing duplication of effort and minimizing errors. This can lead to more efficient and effective medical practice overall.

However, creating high-functioning, patient-focused teams that consistently deliver the collaborative effort needed to provide excellent patient care often represents a significant challenge for healthcare administrators. Yet it remains an essential part of medical group practices’ ability to fulfill their patient-care missions.

Specifically, “team-based care can improve the safety, efficiency, and quality of healthcare,” according to Ted James, MD, MHCM, of Harvard Medical School. “Leveraging the unique skill set and perspective that each member brings to the team enables us to meet patients' needs and advance the health of populations.”1

In that spirit, the following eight tips, gathered from years of project management experience, will help deliver successful healthcare team performance:

1. Agree to agree

The first mistake teams make is failing to arrive at agreement about their basic objectives. To overcome this common error, create a project agreement before starting any new initiative. Ensure that this document covers project scope, how to communicate with each other, how often to conduct meetings, the overall risk team members will collectively tolerate for the project, the constraints everyone agrees are on the project, and each team member’s role. This serves as a template that makes it easier to be agreeable and a document of what each team member has agreed to.

2. Focus on patient satisfaction

In business and in healthcare, what you focus on is what you get. If you want more patients, focus on one or two simple things that patients want, and ensure that you can give it to them 100% of the time.  For example, do patients want the ability to help themselves — rather than having to wait for assistance from a staffer? If so, implement a 24/7 online service so patients can schedule appointments directly into the provider’s schedule in real time. Flexible scheduling saves patients time and enables them to manage their care more effectively. Patients have more autonomy as a result, and professionals have less administrative work to do.

3. What gets measured gets done

Similarly, measurement focuses attention on the priorities that are truly important. Pick key performance indicators (KPIs) carefully and with caution. It is essential that these KPIs measure results, not just activity. Many medical practices track metrics such as: quality of care, cost per outcome, increased operational efficiencies, and effectiveness of new treatments. Top-performing teams deliver results; they don’t simply complete tasks.

4. The platinum rule

While the Golden Rule is to treat others as we want to be treated, the Platinum Rule is to treat others as they want to be treated. Find out how your patients want to be treated and deliver it to them. For example, Millennials generally prefer to use text for communicating. Think about sending appointment reminders via text rather than a phone call.

5. Brain on the wall

At any high-performing organization, the team is a lot smarter together than any one team member is individually. Instead of the usual brainstorming, try a technique called “brain on the wall.” In this activity, each person contributes independently on sticky notes, then pastes their ideas on the wall. This is a way of collectively organizing team input, reading each team member’s idea, and ultimately finding common ground to agree on.

6. Conflict is cash

Differing expectations are the root of all conflict. Consequently, conflict is a better opportunity to fully understand team members’ and patients’ expectations, transforming a negative experience into a positive one. Use conflict to get a deeper understanding of the unique expectations that enable your top-performing teams to deliver fantastic patient care. For example, when COVID-19 hit in March 2020, many medical practices were not equipped to provide telehealth. Many providers resisted telehealth even though it was the best solution to deliver care to sick patients while keeping clinicians safe from infection. Consider that in an average four-hour shift, a primary care physician typically sees about 12 patients. With telehealth, physicians may be able to “see” 16 or more patients in that same timeframe.2 Conflict is unavoidable — when it happens, make it profitable.

7. Recognize the rainbows

Team-wide diversity can shake up the status quo and stimulate change. A rainbow of race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status is a pot of gold for new ideas. For example, racial and ethnic minorities may face disparities in healthcare access and outcomes. Having a diverse healthcare workforce can help identify and address these disparities and provide culturally competent care. The benefits of leadership diversity in healthcare include an enhanced ability to innovate by gaining a variety of perspectives, a particularly important advantage in implementing population health management programs.3

8. Fine-tune the team

The best-performing teams energize everyone around them, performing together like a well-tuned orchestra. All team members are individually tuned and on task, collectively generating a harmony that resonates. Take time to rejuvenate your team with practice and tuning by participating in periodic team-building activities. For example, volunteering as a team at a local hospital, day care or nursing home can help build a sense of purpose and camaraderie. Additionally, role-playing exercises can help teams practice communication skills and empathy. Consider role-playing scenarios that are relevant to the healthcare field, such as dealing with difficult patients or colleagues.

Building an effective patient-care team takes more than just communication and coordination — though those factors certainly help. Team members must converge around a collaborative mindset that begins by setting and understanding expectations, focusing on patient satisfaction, and measuring the right results. Then, the collective power of the team can be unleashed to deliver stellar patient care that improves lives.

Notes

1. James TA. “Teamwork as a Core Value in Health Care.” Trends in Medicine. August 6, 2021. https://postgraduateeducation.hms.harvard.edu/trends-medicine/teamwork-core-value-health-care.
2. Zielinski L. “How to plan for and profitably operate telehealth services.” HFMA. May 21, 2020. https://www.hfma.org/technology/telemedicine/how-to-plan-for-and-profitably-operate-telehealth-services.
3. “Healthcare Diversity in the Spotlight.” Merrit Hawkins. January 5, 2021. https://www.merritthawkins.com/2021-healthcare-diversity-white-paper.