ACPE news.

There has never been a more critical time or need for physician executive leadership than now.

A Message From ACPE's New President A Call For Balance And Leadership

Not just in our own respective institutions as they face intense environmental pressures, but on the local and national level, as well. The direction of health care in America is currently leaderless and rudderless.

Numerous factors are creating confusion and chaos:

* Rapidly rising costs

* Increasing numbers of uninsured

* Professional frustration

* Nursing shortages

* An exploding need for health care as the baby boom bolus matures past 50

* Overzealous Office of Inspector General investigations

* A deep public distrust of the managed care solutions of the past and the institutions that created them

The future of health care is well described by Lee Kaiser in this issue of The Physician Executive journal panel discussion as "flounder." To create and implement solutions to these issues requires leadership, but the nation is currently afflicted with the proverbial leadership vacuum.

Special Interests or Leadership

Nature abhors a vacuum, and some stakeholder/special interest will step forward to fill it. Judging from the past, the need of the stakeholder will primarily be addressed -- often at the expense of other stakeholders and the health of the health care system as a whole.

National insurance companies will struggle to retain relevance by continuing to contain costs for employers and at the same time fulfill their fiduciary obligation to the shareholder.

Hospital boards and administrators will be seduced into adding more bricks during the baby boom influx, ignoring the coming impact of genomics, pharmaceuticals, ambulatory technology, and support staff shortages.

Eager regulators who survive by prosecuting unintentional Medicare infractions can destroy the very institutions and providers they seek to protect for the public.

Finally, frustrated legislators responding to employers, the elderly and the increasing percentage of uninsured, will be driven to pass legislation that treats a current ill but unintentionally causes a future terminal disease.

It is into this vacuum that the physician executive must step. Not simply to represent the parochial interests of their physician colleagues or the institutions where they work, nor to particularly promulgate one policy or economic solution over another.

But physician executives arrive as the harbingers for careful and rational thought and the need for balance.

Interdependence and Balance

Physician executives are the only individuals who have first-hand knowledge of the impact of change on the key components of health care.

They understand the critical role of employees and their morale in making any office or system function well. Their entrance into the administrative side of medicine illuminated the requirement for sound financials in any health care organization. By the nature of their healing role, physician executives have an intuitive grasp of how medicine is both an extension into, and of, the community.

Finally, physician executives are the only health care administrators/policy makers who have looked the patient in the eye with the full force of the fiduciary responsibility of caring for that individual's best interests.

All of these entities must exist in a mutually dependent relationship to survive, and as in any relationship, there must exist a dynamic and fluid balance between them. Assuring that balance while we solve our health care crises is the role of physician executives.

Leading Beyond The Bottom Line

During this last year, under the leadership of Randy Randolph, MD, and Roger Schenke, ACPE developed the concept of "Leading Beyond the Bottom Line," and the physician executive's role in articulating and actualizing it.

It fully encompasses the key components of health care and their interdependence. During my year as president of the College, it is my intention to continue the evolution of "Leading Beyond the Bottom Line" both as a concept of leadership in health care, and as a practical method of managing health care organizations.

It is not the answer. Rather, it is a philosophy and value set that places physician executives as the balanced and fiduciary leaders in health care. As I stated at the outset, there has never been a greater need for leadership. I believe physician executives can provide that leadership. And the College can capitalize on its unique educational mission to provide the tools physician executives need to take on the leadership role.

Literally Speaking

ACPE Literary Awards Announced

ACPE is pleased to announce the 2000 recipients of our literary achievement awards. The Robert A. Henry Literary Book Award is presented to Juanita E. Limpin, MD, for her book "How to Get (a lot) More New Patients."

The 110-page book, published by M.D. Publishing Company, is loaded with tips, checklists, and straightforward advice to doctors looking to draw more patients.

"I believe new and older practice groups can benefit from this book which offers innovative and practical advice for building and maintaining a medical practice," said one physician who reviewed the book.

Limpin is president of J M J Med Corp, Inc. in Covina, CA.

The Rodney T. West Literary Achievement Award is presented to Howard Kirz, MD, MBA, FACPE and an ACPE faculty member for his article, "Congratulations, You're Fired," that appeared in the July/August 2000 issue of The Physician Executive journal.

The article examines the high rate of termination that physician executives face, and offers ways to prepare, prevent and prevail over termination from your job.

"This article is a Rosetta stone for how to decipher the subtle, and not so subtle, signals before you're fired," one reviewer wrote, "This article represents the right mix of survey data, life experience, and anecdote to make the topic credible and useful for a physician executive trying to survive in the rapids of a high risk profession."

Kirz teaches an ACPE course on managing physician performance and is an executive coach and principal in The Clearwater Group, a consulting firm in Bainbridge Island, WA.

ACPE Scholarships Awarded

The College is pleased to announce three new ACPE scholarship recipients for 2001. The scholarships are awarded annually to physicians who are employed in health care organizations that serve areas that are medically underserved or that rely predominantly on public or charitable funding.

Each scholarship includes tuition and expenses to attend three ACPE courses. This years scholarship recipients are:

Bryan Hollinger, MD, MPH, medical director and provider specialist in pediatrics, internal medicine, and HIV/AIDS at Esperanza Health Center, Inc, in Philadelphia, PA. The health center serves the poor and medically needy in North Philadelphia.

Carlyle Schlabach, MD, associate medical director of the Navajo Health Foundation in Ganado, AZ, that provides medical care to underserved patients in the Navajo community.

Eric I. Schwartz, MD, chief medical officer of a multi-site community health center in Trenton, NJ, that serves over 10,000 patients annually, with two-thirds uninsured.