Boosting Clinician Engagement Is Essential for Improving Operational Performance. Here’s Why.

In a time when CMOs are struggling with physician retention and thinning margins, research has shown that clinician engagement is linked to promoting operational performance in several dimensions.

According to a literature review published by BMC Health Services Research, physician engagement was found to boost operational performance in four areas: quality and safety, patient outcomes and experience, efficiency and costs, and staff satisfaction. One study found that healthcare organizations in the top quartile for strength of organizational culture outperformed those in the bottom quartile for every physician engagement domain, including hospital efficiency, hospital quality, and overall satisfaction.

According to Hans Cassagnol, MD, MMM, senior vice president and CMO of the CommonSpirit Health Northwest Region, there is a strong link between physician and frontline clinician engagement and organizational performance.

“The more engagement we have with clinicians, the better our patient satisfaction,” Cassagnol says. “Patient satisfaction is linked to key performance measures such as patients returning for postoperative care and completing post-discharge care.”

Engaged clinicians are more successful in getting patients to follow through on discharge instructions, which is crucial to reduce emergency department visits and hospital readmissions, Cassagnol explains.

Clinician engagement efforts

CommonSpirit Health has several approaches to clinician engagement, such as an annual survey that goes out to all clinical staff, including employed physicians and independent physicians.

“This survey gives us information about what we are doing well in terms of clinician engagement and where we have opportunities for improvement,” Cassagnol says.

Once the survey’s results are analyzed, physician leaders, operational leaders, and nurse leaders go to care sites and share the results with frontline caregivers. The survey is also used to form action plans when the results identify opportunities for improvements.

Additionally, the health system holds forums that give physicians and other clinicians an opportunity to interact with each other as well as physician leaders and administrative leaders.

“These forums give clinicians a chance to help shape the work they do on a day-to-day basis,” Cassagnol says.

To boost engagement with clinicians, hospital presidents and CMOs hold events to engage clinicians as often as a monthly basis, Cassagnol explains. These events include luncheons where clinicians can interact with senior leaders.

In addition, senior hospital leaders have open office hours once per week in locations such as physician lounges, where any staff member can walk in and interact with leaders.

“Since I joined CommonSpirit in 2024, there has been a conscious effort to increase the number of forums for physician leaders,” Cassagnol says. “The health system’s chief physician executive officer, Tom McGinn, has increased the number of leadership forums for both employed physicians and independent physicians.”

The health system has a leadership academy for physicians and other clinicians. The leadership academy, which trains cohorts over a period ranging from a year to 18 months, supports clinicians who are interested in leadership roles by teaching a skillset that is not necessarily taught in medical school. The skills that are taught include emotional intelligence and the business aspects of healthcare.

In addition, there are peer-to-peer learning opportunities related to leadership development in areas such as credentialling, peer review, and the governance process for the medical staff.

Examples of clinician engagement driving change

Cassagnol cites two examples of where clinician engagement generated positive changes at CommonSpirit Health hospitals.

Clinician engagement was pivotal in improving emergency department efficiency at St. Michael Medical Center in Silverdale, Washington, according to Cassagnol.

“There was a significant opportunity to reduce the amount of time patients were staying in the emergency department and reducing the left-without-being-seen rate,” Cassagnol says. “We want to have a left-without-being-seen rate of less than 2%, but St. Michael’s rate was about 4%.”

The hospital’s senior leadership, including the CEO, CMO, and CNO, engaged emergency department staff members in efforts such as a half-day event and two-day event to improve emergency department efficiency. The ED’s left-without-being-seen rate is now less than 1%.

“At this hospital, we have achieved a drastic reduction in length of stay over the past two years,” Cassagnol says. “We worked with physicians on the frontlines who were admitting and discharging patients to see what we could do better, and they came up with a plan that reduced length of stay.”