How AMGA members can take advantage of the Practicing Excellence partnership

What good is a partnership if members can’t access it?

In an interview with Physicians Practice, AMGA President and CEO Jerry Penso, M.D., MBA, and Practicing Excellence founder Stephen Beeson, M.D., discuss how practices are already taking advantage of their organizations’ partnership.

Physicians Practice: OK, how will AMGA members actually be able to access this? Is it a member benefit, a discounted add-on, a pilot for certain groups, or something else? What’s the expected adoption path?

Jerry Penso, MD, MBA, President and CEO of AMGA: Let’s start with this. Thirty AMGA members, medical groups and health systems across the country, are already using it. The best way for members to learn what’s working is from each other. They’ll be discussing in their groups: Here are the challenges we’re facing, and here are the solutions we’re finding.

AMGA plays the role of facilitator with our strategic partners. We make sure members are aware that Practicing Excellence is a strategic partner and has been fully vetted by AMGA. Members will work directly with Practicing Excellence on contracting and making sure the product is working well, and they’ll get special discounted rates so they know this is an AMGA partner.

Stephen Beeson, M.D., founder of Practicing Excellence: Part of what this partnership is about is speaking to the power of raising the capabilities of your people. That’s what our company is focused on, the application of skill development to raise capability, achieve measurable outcomes in health care, do it at scale, and do it continuously, not episodically, to create learning and continuously improving organizational cultures.

When we meet with organizations, we share the power of human development, the data that comes from it, what’s possible to achieve, what a partnership looks like, and we take them through a discovery process: Do we want to tap a human development strategy to help us achieve our goals?

My personal view is it’s really hard to execute at the 95th percentile on something like patient experience without developing and applying the behaviors that allow that goal to manifest. The catalyst is developing people in a way that creates enrichment, value, contentment, purpose and pride, while also doing the behaviors that move the organization’s metrics. That’s contribution and contentment powered by continuous human development.

JP: Steve and I both have a background in performance improvement, and what’s important there is outcomes. Are you really moving the needle? Are you changing things for clinicians, for their patients, for the organization?

That was one of the criteria our strategic growth committee looked at: Are organizations finding value and real ROI on their investment in solutions like this? And the answer is definitely yes.

SB: In this era of compressed budgets, there’s a lot of discernment about where you apply limited resources to get ROI and measurable outcomes.

When we partner with organizations, a couple foundations have to be in place. First, clarity of intent: What do you want to achieve? Second, how will we measure success? We map organizational learning pathways to a specific goal and track it. We’re not interested in having people learn and apply skills if it’s not rendering enterprise results. Every dollar we spend to help the organization improve has to demonstrate ROI and measurable outcomes. We take that imperative very, very seriously.

JP: One last point. We have our annual conference coming up in April in Las Vegas. Our members gather, and they’re not looking for just dialogue. They’re looking for solutions. What’s working? This is a wonderful opportunity to highlight strategic partners like Practicing Excellence.

Our members will speak for themselves. Here’s what’s working. Here’s the value and ROI, not just in dollars, but in better clinician experience, better retention and better patient experience. So at our annual conference, our members will really highlight: This is what we’re finding, and this is something you should take a good look at.