Business Basics for Kaiser Permanente Physician-Managers

PHILIP J TUSO, MD, FACP, has been with The Southern California Medical Group since 1993. From 1995 until present, he has served as Assistant Chief of Service for the Department of Internal Medicine. For the last two years he has been a Co-Chair for the Southern California Regional Asthma Care Management Program. He has provided leadership for improving access and service in both primary care and many population care management programs. In addition he has led efforts to achieve appropriate inpatient utilization, and has provided oversight for quality management. In the past year, Dr Tuso has also focused on efforts to understand the relationship between budget, access models and member satisfaction. E-mail: [email protected]. Introduction When they joined Kaiser Permanente, most of our physicians might not have fully foreseen the present need to understand the basic business concepts necessary to help manage their medical practices. Over the years, the Permanente Medical Groups have realized that physician-leaders need certain skills to manage the business aspect of their medical groups more effectively. In the next decade, many Permanente physicians will increasingly be asked to use their managerial skills to improve the quality of care we provide our members. Indeed, Permanente physicians need basic business skills for several reasons: • We are held accountable for developing and monitoring budgets. • We are held accountable for exercising control over our business operations. • We are held accountable to develop new ideas that will make us more competitive. • We are held accountable for developing future leaders of our medical groups. To supplement learnings from the didactic leadership courses developed by the Southern California Permanente Medical Group (SCPMG), this article presents for all Permanente physicians an overview of information not always specifically included in training seminars. The road to being a leader in any organization is not always easy, and many of the skills we acquire as leaders are handed down to us by our mentors—but mentors are not all equal, and variation in mentoring techniques may prevent some managers from acquiring knowledge that will help them become more effective as leaders. The cost of leadership is usually criticism, and many managers learn certain skills by trial and error. When Permanente physicians acquire business skills, they enable our medical groups to more effectively provide high-quality medicine at an affordable price while maintaining market strength.