How to Improve Population Health Through Hiring
As a healthcare organization, one of your most important goals is to improve population health. The idea is to focus on improving long-term health, decreasing imbalances in health care, and using preventative medicine to improve the health of a set population of patients. While you can’t directly control a patient’s behavior, genetics, or social environment; your organization can put changes in place when it comes to policies, programs, and hiring practices that can have a significantly positive effect on population health. Today, we’ll discuss how hiring the right executive talent can significantly improve population health.
How to Improve Population Health Through Hiring
Population Health and Leadership
As we hinted above, population health can be a daunting undertaking. It is affected by many factors and there is no one thing that can be the cure-all for population health. However, putting the right executive talent in place at various levels within your organization can make a noteworthy difference.
If population health is an initiative you plan to focus on, then you need to begin to place executives wo are experienced in this realm.
Where to Find Population Health Leaders
Because of the vagueness of population health, C-Suite leaders will need to be flexible, adaptable, and have knowledge of multiple areas of the healthcare continuum. A C-suite Population Health leader will need to have healthcare experience, great people and networking skills, and be able to manage a complex calendar that involves multiple humanities, people and departments. Health population leaders will also need to be able to work closely with other C-suite leaders in order to maximize and streamline processes and finances.
A good pool of talent to look at when working on finding population health leaders is at physician leaders. Physician leaders create bridges between management and those who directly deal with the patient. They understand the challenges that physicians, nurses, and front of the house team members deal with on a daily basis and will be able to better communicate the value of certain investments that other departments (such as financial and compliance) may not initially understand.
Skills to Look for in Strong Population Health Leaders
Degrees & Certifications
Chances are if you are looking for someone to take on the role of a population leader, he or she will have medical and healthcare qualifications. However, it is those candidates who have degrees in areas outside of this realm – business, health administration – who have a greater possibility of making an immediate difference to population health. A candidate with this type of knowledge can set up structures and optimize resources that are needed from the administration side of things to create a successful population health management program.
Public Health Experience
Executive healthcare talent that has experience working with governmental entities on either the state or national level will bring a different perspective to private healthcare organizations. This type of experience allows the population health leader to have a better understanding of how socioeconomic and political happenings affect population health.
Physician Experience
As mentioned before, physician leaders can be very effective when it comes to population health management. Because they understand how physicians and their teams work within an organization, they oftentimes have an easier time in making changes in physician behaviors, and in turn, changing processes within departments.
Data Analytics
Another great asset to population health is a person with strong data analysis skills. Because population health does not reside within a box, it is important that data be looked at with a wide scope. This kind of clinical, financial and demographic data is of no use unless someone can parse it out and translate it into actionable items that can easily be put into place.
Population Health Executive Search Firms
If you are looking to bring on leaders who can have a positive impact on population health, you will need to work with an executive search firm that understands the inner workings of healthcare organizations. The team at Summit Talent Group is made up of people with deep industry experience.
When you sit with any member of our team, you can be assured that we understand your pain points and that we understand that the talent you bring on needs to have more than just qualifications. They need to be a right fit for your organization and its needs and because Summit Talent Group is a boutique firm, each member of our team truly takes the time to get to know your healthcare organization inside and out. This is the Summit Talent Group difference. If you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with your executive search needs, contact us. We look forward to speaking with you.
Business Manager, Summit Talent Group