By Jay Juffre

I was recently asked to speak to a large group of doctors in Columbus, Ohio, on how to drive better staff engagement and patient experience. I started my talk by asking the assembled what was the most important to them – profit, patients, growth or staff? To no one’s real surprise, patients was ranked first by about 2/3 of the participants, Staff was a distant second at just under 1/3. A few folks did rank profit or growth as number one. After mulling over the responses, I candidly looked at the audience and asked, ‘ Do you really thing the patient will ever be happier than the person taking care of them?’ Look the argument is simple, without patients, there will be nothing for the staff to do. However, without an engaged staff, who is going to care for the patients? The statistics are alarming. About 56% of healthcare professionals who voluntarily resigned their position in the past 18 months cited job burnout as the key reason for leaving. Alarmingly, the vast majority quit their jobs without having a new one lined up. This group was confident that they would find new employment quickly if they needed to. People are talking with their feet. Now with all this doom and gloom and scary statistics, what is the remedy? The solution is to hold on to your great people by taking their engagement to the next level. Involve your people to own their results. Look for ways to get everyone to love coming to work every day. For those of you who think this is impossible, the simple response is, how hard are you really working at it? What programs do you and the leadership team currently have in place to have employees for life? When pressed, most leaders can only cite a few outdated initiatives. Look for new ways to engage the team. You will see patient referrals tick up, staff turnover drop, and be amazed at how growth and profits improve every month moving forward. Have a great 2023!

Jay Juffre is Executive Vice President, ImageFIRST. For more information on ImageFIRST, call 1-800-932-7472 or visit www.imagefirst.com.