Turning Doctors into Leaders

The problem with medicine, the author writes, is people like him: Fifty-something doctors trained in an era of autonomous hero-practitioners. These lone cowboy physicians may work hard, but they don't provide the best possible care, because they're embedded in a fragmented, chaotic, performance-blind system. Fixing this will require a new kind of leader who can organize doctors into teams, measure their performance not by how much they do but by how their patients fare, deftly apply financial and behavioral incentives, improve processes, and dismantle dysfunctional cultures. Drawing on examples from best-practice institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, and his own organization, Partners HealthCare System of Boston, Lee shows how a "new breed of leader" is orienting strategy around patients' needs (a more radical idea than it might sound) and raising the quality, efficiency, and value of care. A sidebar written by Partners strategy director Kelly W. Hall looks at how peer pressure can drive improved performance.