Top 5 CMO stories of 2024

At HealthLeaders, this year’s top CMO stories focus on care team planning, prescribing, ‘medspeak,’ physician visits, and physician leadership development.

As part of our CMO coverage, HealthLeaders has published more than two articles this year. The following are the top 5 CMO stories of 2024 (click on the title link to read the full story):

1. The End of the Doctor’s Age. Start Years APP.

It’s time for physician leaders to say the unspoken part out loud: There will never be enough physicians. And even if you get them and keep them, it’s hard to pay them all off.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that in the next 12 years, the US will be short 86,000 physicians, more than half of whom are primary care physicians. The future is a zero-sum game, where the medical needs of an aging population collide with a declining number of doctors.

To fill those gaps, health systems and hospitals are promoting advanced practice providers and giving them more responsibility. The change brought about by the care team design is forcing CMOs and other managers to think about how they manage their physicians to ensure a productive work environment and good clinical outcomes.

Since this change, CMOs have begun to wonder if they need as many doctors as they thought, especially since APPs sometimes do most of the work.

This begs the question, is it time for CMOs to downsize their doctors and install other APPs instead? Although the question is partly written in humor, it does not mean that there are no pros and cons to consider the leading groups of APP.

2. How Medication Management Can Reduce Admission, ICU Stays

For patients with multiple medications, prescribing is an important strategy to promote patient safety and quality of care.

The main risk of many medications is drug interactions. This risk can lead to an increase or decrease in the effects of the medication as well as unwanted effects and side effects.

Cost and waste are other factors, depending Karna PatelMD, MPH, vice president at Tampa General Hospital and president of Tampa General Medical Group.

“The more medications you add, the more costs there are to pay for those medications,” Patel says. “Globally, over-prescribing can lead to drug waste.”

When evaluating patients with multiple medications, clinic visits and visits to other health care facilities are an opportunity to review the patient’s medication list, according to Patel.

“At that point, we want to make sure that all the medications the patient is taking are appropriate for their condition,” Patel says. “We’re also looking at interactions. That’s a good time to try to reduce or combine medications.”

3. How Clinicians Can Avoid ‘Medspeak’ When Talking to Patients

For physicians, communicating in a clear and understandable manner is essential to providing quality care.

According to me Centers for Disease Control and Preventiononly 12% of US adults have a high level of health literacy.

“Medpeak” is characterized as medical jargon used by doctors leading to gaps in communication with patients. Medspeak is leading the way in collaborative decision making for nurses and patients.

There are many steps that nurses can take to ensure that they communicate medical terms and procedures effectively, and it is the CMO’s job to ensure that their nurses are aware of mespeak and procedure. of avoiding it.

“The definitions, acronyms and terms we use in medicine seem natural to doctors, but patients often don’t understand these words.” Donald WhitingMD, CMO of Allegheny Health Network and president of the Allegheny Clinic. “Doctors can fly through an explanation without engaging the patient, and then leave them behind.”

4. How CMOs Should Do How Admissions Practitioners Use the Organized Process

Onboarding is about more than just helping nurses navigate the hiring process.

According to me Doctor’s and Doctor’s Research Report is an Association of Advanced Physician Recruiters and Providers (APPR), successful onboarding programs bring nurses together as an organization, familiarize them with nursing practices, and provide physicians with tools and support to help them succeed in their new role. AAPPR compiled this information from a survey conducted in partnership with Jackson Physician Search and LocumTenens.com.

Providing effective clinical practice is critical to the success of the health system, according to Pranav MehtaMD, MBA, CMO of HCA Healthcare American and Atlantic Groups. HCA Healthcarewith more than 180 hospitals, it has more than 45,000 employed and affiliated physicians.

“It’s very important that we move those doctors in an orderly and approachable way,” says Mehta. “We spend time onboarding them as they transition out of our organization into our practices. That gives us the ability to make sure they’re successful in their clinical careers.”

5. CMO: Physician Leadership Development Involves Planned and Unplanned Efforts

Physician leadership development is critical to the US health care system because many of the best performing hospitals are physician-led.

Research shows that there is a gap between physicians’ interest in leadership development and opportunities to obtain this experience.

A report from the Jackson Physician Search and Medical Group Management Association found that 67% of physicians surveyed were interested in leadership development opportunities, but only 18% had been exposed to informal leadership development through their education or clinical practice experience.

It is important that health systems and hospitals provide opportunities for leadership development, he says Kristin’s mascotMD, MS-HQSM, CPE, CMO of Penrose Hospital, part of CommonSpirit Health‘s Mountain Region.

At CommonSpirit, there are formal and informal leadership development opportunities for early and mid-career physicians who have demonstrated impact in their department or on committees, according to Scotti.

“It’s important to give physicians opportunities for leadership development,” says Scotti. “Some of the best-performing health centers and hospitals in the nation are physician-led.”