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At its core, your healthcare organization is an enterprise. It is a business. The fact that it may be a not-for-profit does not change anything. For profit or 501 c3, it must operate like a high performing business operation. Our firm has advised our healthcare services clients, especially those in Air Medical Transport, EMS/Fire and hospital systems to model their Outreach Operating Units and overall structure, performance expectations and practices like those of a leading high-tech medical device company. Function as they would. Survival depends upon it. 

Because all too often healthcare organizations are led and managed by clinicians, they have a huge advantage over those that are not. 

These can directly be transferred to Outreach practices, processes  and methods. Our firm’s core specialty has been training and mentoring clinicians to understand and apply marketing, logistics, planning, execution and other business mind-sets and skill sets. Once a clinician realizes the similarities between clinical practices and business practices – they become super-Outreach Operators.

On the other hand, the healthcare culture from didactive training through clinicals and once in the workforce often harbors disdain or even resentment of the business aspects of the profession. I can speak from direct experience. In my early years as a nationally registered paramedic I thought the bane of healthcare was the business side of it. I thought business and finance were almost evil. Until I was forced by one of my undergrad advisors to take an Organizational Behavior and Management course. There I learned why business was crucial. They work in symbiosis not exclusivity. No margin, no mission. Homeostasis applies for humans and the organizations providing healthcare for Humans and employing them.

I advocate that at the very beginning of every kind of clinical specialty education – that students should be required to take and pass a course in the fundamentals of business, entrepreneurship, marketing and finance. Understand from day one how mission, margin and ROI (Return on Investment) apply to effective clinical performance and outcomes. 

ThinkThroughTools and OutreachU brought science to medical Outreach. More than 25 years later, this continues and will always endure as our Outreach principles, methods and tactics apply scientific methods and processes. This is why understanding customers is so important, getting a sense of their reality. Maintaining dynamic data, creating hyper-individualized Outreach plans for each and operating with a high focus on Outreach protocols that are field-proven, repeatable and scalable. 

Finally, within this essential element – moral attributes and behaviors must be in play. What your healthcare organization or business does is a powerful positive mission, and morals and values must be embedded in your Outreach. Integrity in motion. 

My Primary Care Physician, Reema Taneja, MD, often reminds me, Her bringing this powerful message to my life that I try to remember daily, apply and communicate with others is core. Throughout history, whatever spiritual doctrine or faith you embrace, those leading each, have been our most important Outreachers of all.

As an important Outreach note, Dr. Taneja has been applying our EXPECTool RapidReferenceCard ™ in her private practice for many years.

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However you engineer your Outreach Operating System and however you train your Outreach Operators, inform them and provide them guidance that stems from business, science and moral fundamentals. Individuals are trusting in you and your organization. Provide them justification to be requesting and calling for your services through sound structure and Outreach operating principles.

I would greatly appreciate learning about how you and your organization clarify your Outreach principles and values for staff and your customers. Email [email protected] 

To learn more about the book, the online course, and the Healthcare Outreach Practitioner LEVEL I Credential go to thinkthroughtools.com or email [email protected]. 

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