Bronson Healthcare’s Provider Leadership Academy (PLA) aims to to enrich and transform the healthcare leadership journey for aspiring leaders. Participants develop a robust network of peers and executive leaders and lead organization change through strategic projects. The program provides these leaders with the tools and resources to continue to learn, lead, impact, and pave the way for excellence.
This program was developed to align with Bronson Healthcare’s Partnership Compact, a social agreement between physicians, advanced practice professionals, and administration that outlines the commitments they make to each other. The compact outlines values such as a focus on quality, commitment to patients, trust, embracing change, and supporting well-being.
Program Details
The eight-month program consists of 29 active providers, including physicians and advanced practice providers, with participation from key stakeholders and executive leaders. The PLA fosters an environment where participants can interact with the senior leadership team. Discussion groups, fireside chats, and involvement of senior executives in both content development and content facilitation create the stage for “humanzing” those at the top level of the organization, fostering collaboration and a sense of belonging.
The PLA starts with a welcome and orientation session and ends with a session allowing the participants to present their leadership findings and reflect on the program to help them continue their leadership journey and apply their learning and development to their future endeavors.
Sessions include:
- Understanding Yourself as a Leader: This interactive session focused on Emotional Intelligence allows leaders to increase self-awareness, improve their ability to handle stress, and gain a better understanding of themselves as leaders.
- Values-Driven Leadership: This session helps participants explore their core values and authenticity as a leader while also improving alignment with team goals.
- Leading Others—Influential Leadership: During this week, participants learn how to improve their coalition-building skills, gain a deeper understanding of influential leadership, and learn how to experience greater success in implementing leadership initiatives.
- Where Are We Going? Strategic leadership explores how to balance high-level strategy work with monitoring progress on the ground, focusing on agility in team management and enhancing team motivation and engagement.
- The Business of Healthcare: Participants gain a deeper understanding of the financial and policy aspects of healthcare, enabling them to make more informed decisions and better navigate the healthcare system. Participants also gain skills related to managing healthcare costs to make the best use of resources.
- Progress, Not Perfection: Continuous improvement with Lean principles focuses on the ability to monitor and evaluate performance, drive continuous improvement, and enhance leadership skills through change management, communication, and team leadership.
In each session, participants outline how they will apply their learning, such as improving collaboration with others in the organization, using the DiSC model to improve relationships and leadership skills, being more aware of personal triggers and barriers, building better connections with teammates and recognizing their personal values, influencing positive change with non-clinical staff, and enhancing strategic decision-making processes with the strategic cascade and decision wheel tools.
After each session, Bronson Healthcare conducts surveys around satisfaction with the mechanics of the session, as well as how participants plan to change their practice.
Three months after the training, a reinforcement session brings all participants back to discuss lessons learned relative to the outcomes and topics of the program. This session, called Homecoming: Stories from the Field, provides a space for connection, sharing, and collaboration.
Results
The net promotor score for the first six sessions averaged 9.17. The communication statement, “Bronson does a good job communicating with physicians and advanced practice professionals,” earned a 56 percent favorable response on the bi-annual engagement survey. The “likelihood to recommend Bronson” on the patient satisfaction survey was 90.1 percent, achieving the company’s goal. And the operating margin was less than 2 percent, hitting the target and demonstrating that development of continuous improvement skills results in improvements in efficiency and resource management.
