Most executives believe identifying best practices for engaging physicians in cost and quality improvements has the greatest opportunity to improve performance, according to The Advisory Board's Annual Health Care CEO Survey.
According to The Advisory Board, survey respondents this year were twice as likely to rate physician engagement as their best opportunity to improve performance compared with other topics — nearly 90 percent of hospital and health system executives reported an interest in physician engagement.
Executives' interest in increasing physician engagement this year marks a notable change from last year's poll, when executives named physician engagement as the third-ranked area of interest for improving performance.
The Annual Health Care CEO Survey included responses from 157 C-suite executives in December 2014. The top five areas of greatest opportunity for performance improve as indicated by the survey results include:
1. Engaging physicians in cost and quality improvements
2. Redesigning service portfolios for population health
3. Strengthening primary care physician alignment
4. Utilizing direct-to-employer contracting
5. Controlling avoidable utilization
"Physician engagement has consistently been a strategic priority for progressive provider organizations, and The Advisory Board has been driving best practices research in this area for years. But recently, we have seen it emerge the top strategic priority in the shift to population health," said Chas Roades, chief research officer at The Advisory Board Company. "Our research underscores that physician engagement is imperative to an organization's successful transition to value-based care models. Driving fundamental and sustainable changes to providers' business model is impossible without buy-in from the clinicians on the frontlines of patient care."