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In Reply To: Re:Palliative Care Physician
Previous Message: Re:Re:Palliative Care Physician

Post Re:Re:Palliative Care Physician
Author: tcousounis
Date: Nov 12, 2007 12:55 pm

I'll make certain assumptions about the "physician champion" you refer to - it is a full-time committment, you're seeking to grow the program, the physician champion will serve as both clinician and manager, and you're open to looking for the right person inside AND outside your organization. The post by Arkavd describes the basic competencies and skills that the champion should bring to the role.
Our experience and research has shown that "champions" have been successful not so much because of what they bring to the role, but what the organizational program sponsor brings to the program champion. Certainly, a multi-talented physician champion increases the chances of success, but we've found that it is the tools (intellectual capital) that she/he has to work with that is the primary determinant of success. The physician starting a practice (which is essentially what the program champion will be doing) needs to have strong clinical skills and knowledge, to be sure, but will need also to create goodwill (to build solid referral patterns), establish business processes, workflow, and databases, and generate revenue to produce a sustainable program. Program sponsors typically don't possess this intellectual capital specific to palliative care, and so, champions often find themselves stretched to produce results with little "infrastructure".
To your query about where to find physician champions, do keep in mind that many of your peers are looking for similar talent. And while the number of certified palliative care physicians has more than tripled in this decade, demand exceeds supply by a wide margin. Where scales are thus tipped, advertising (whether by flyers, postings on job boards or publications) will attract the attention of less than one-quarter of the available talent pool, and that one-quarter usually does not match the profile of the "champion" you're seeking. Our experience has shown that partnering with recruiting experts (either in-house or third-party) to conduct a multi-faceted sourcing campaign will increase the likelihood of finding the right match to fill the role.

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