The MedMan Podcast_Brad Turpen_Part 1: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The MedMan Podcast_Brad Turpen_Part 1: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Welcome to the MedMan podcast. A podcast focused on helping you level up your practice. I'm Jesse Arnoldson.

Jay Holmes:
And I'm Jay Holmes. Through interviews with some of the most successful leaders in the industry, we help uncover resources, tools, and ideas to help you level up.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Thanks for tuning in and we hope you enjoy today's program.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the MedMan podcast, I'm your host Jesse Arnoldson. Today, I am joined by a good friend of mine, Brad Turpen. Brad is the CEO of Valor Health in Emmett, Idaho. Welcome to the show, Brad.

Brad Turpen:
Thanks, Jesse.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Brad, let's kick things off with what got you into health care in the first place? How did you get introduced to the, to this career path?

Brad Turpen:
Good question. Long story short, I left a career in the Air Force and had a sense of kind of a purpose-driven life. And health care just really resonated with me for some relationships I had. I ended up meeting Jim Trounson, who, you know and left being an officer in the Air Force for an unpaid internship at MedMan. And it just went from there. It's been a great career for me.

Jesse Arnoldson:
That's fantastic. That's the normal path into MedMan is an intern, is an unpaid internship. That's pretty neat that you with your Air Force to that. You know, that that shows some commitment to the career change, right?

Brad Turpen:
Yeah, yeah. And it was fun. Something new to learn, but also feeling like you're at the end of the day, you've done something to help people improve their lives and still opportunities to be in leadership roles just in a different way.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Absolutely. Well, good. Well Brad, I wanted to jump into our interview today talking about how we help physicians develop their leadership skills, how we teach them to lead. Help me understand why this topic, why we, you and I, chose this topic. Why is it so important? Why do we, why should doctors involve themselves in leading, whether it's on a hospital board or inside one of their own practices?

Brad Turpen:
Yeah, in my opinion, I think the importance is really and really an individual or independent practice that's owned by physicians. You've kind of got that business-owner mentality already and getting physicians involved in leadership, I think just really, the downstream impact is improved decision-making, improved, I think the term buy-in is really kind of overused. But if you have people who are really important to the process, i.e. stakeholders who feel like they're doing something together versus having something done to them, the outcomes that you get are significantly improved. I think for physicians clinically, they have a really unique position in healthcare and they drive a lot of the healthcare economics. They drive patient outcomes. And so to not have them involved in your organizational leadership, I think really kind of ignores the ripple effects and the impact that physicians have in health care. So for us as an organization, we work really hard to involve our physicians at almost all levels of the organization. So at the operational level, at the executive level, as well as at the governance level, in leadership roles. And I think that it's a challenge sometimes in the sense that physicians don't necessarily go to business school, right? And they've been trained a certain way. They've been rewarded for behaving in a certain way. And if you look at like the different types of leadership, you need different flavors depending on the situation. And I think one of the challenges is trying to help physicians understand the value of the different types of leadership. So if you're in the ICU and a patient's crashing, that needs a significantly different type of leadership than if you're contemplating a new clinic and expanding a service line or something like that, and you need to get stakeholder involvement and have those conversations about what this means so that it's just a really exciting topic. That's why I wanted to talk about it. I don't think you can get anything done in health care without physicians engaged in strong leadership roles.

Jesse Arnoldson:
I love it. Absolutely. Well, I think that there's a couple of stages here, right. So you've either convinced or you've engaged a physician there at the table, they're willing they're there wanting to jump in and show leadership. What difference have you seen between physicians that have worked on or developed leadership-related skills or those that just kind of just jump into it and are thrown into it? What's the difference between those that have developed those skills versus those who don't?

Brad Turpen:
Oh, gosh. I think the difference is really in effectiveness overall and it really depends on personality. But it seems like those physicians who are willing and accepting of the fact that they might not be a natural-born-leader and have all the leadership skills and communication skills to be effective. So there's definitely a sense of humility, I think, that's required early on in the process to say, hey, I want to be a leader in the organization. And I realize that maybe I don't know everything about it and I'm willing to learn. To me, that seems kind of like the secret sauce that makes physician leaders eventually be successful, you know, sort of forcing physicians into leadership roles, that usually doesn't work out very well.

Jesse Arnoldson:
No, it doesn't.

Brad Turpen:
But it's a matter of trying to identify what people are passionate about and helping boost them from a leadership perspective. And I'll give you an example. One of our physicians is just passionate about obstetric care and that component of the full spectrum family practice doctor. And so what a perfect fit to say. Hey, help us lead our labor and delivery program, finding ways to enhance the services, improve our training, connect more with the community, all of those things, and we'll help you learn how to be a leader. So take kind of match your passion with our ability to help you be a leader. And I think that's that's an example of a way to be successful versus just kind of like throwing somebody in there and saying, well, you seem to like this. Go, go do it. That just really doesn't end well. Did I answer your question?

Jesse Arnoldson:
I think so. You know, I'm thinking about as you're looking for physicians that can fill that leadership role just from what you said, it's a combination of humility. I guess they're humble, they're hungry, and there's some sort of alignment between what you need and what they're passionate about, right?

Brad Turpen:
Oh, yeah. I think beyond alignment, there's there's an intersection there that's that really works out well. I do think that it's incumbent on those of us who have gone to business school and taken leadership courses and read leadership books to try to understand what motivates this physician. How can I connect with them? How can I present something in a way that causes them to want to learn and want to be better and is meaningful and really give them tools to use? I'd coach a lot of youth sports. And, you know, you can't teach a 10-year-old the same skills that you would teach a 16-year-old.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Right.

Brad Turpen:
But you've got to teach the 10-year-old the skills that are going to eventually get to the point that when they are 16, you can teach them those skills and they have lots of success. I think it's the same thing with leadership. You figure out not that their physicians are immature or anything like that, but just on a leadership journey, we can't overwhelm them with these highly complicated leadership models. If we, if we kind of help them learn how to block and tackle first and have good personal interactions, good communication skills, simple things like getting things done and taking action items down and following up and circling back with people, those are the types of basics that I think once they start to see some success in that it makes them hungry for even more. That's that's great. That makes me feel good as a leader. I feel like I'm serving people. We're moving ahead as an organization. So give me the next skill set.

Jesse Arnoldson:
I like that. Brad, is there anything else, maybe an early indicator of a physician who has, has good potential to be a great leader or even the opposite of that? Are there early indicators that you look at like maybe this isn't your path?

Brad Turpen:
Yeah, I do think so. And most of it's about behavior and interactions with other people. I think the early indicators of leadership has to do with, honestly consideration of others. I think of one of our newest physicians who is really showing signs of being a great leader. And part of it is the way that she treats her staff around her and really values their input and their perspective on simple things like how are we going to room a patient? How are we going to care for the patient? How are we going to follow up on test results and things like that? And the idea that you have value, you're a valuable member of the team, even though I'm the physician, I'm making the ultimate call.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Yeah.

Brad Turpen:
In my mind, those are those types of behaviors are really good indicators of future leadership success.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Absolutely. How do they engage people on every level, right, from receptionist to CFO? And then the other thing, how do they lead without a title or how do they if they're not chief medical officer, if they're just playing in their role without any official leadership responsibility, how do they lead without those things in place? Can they get people engaged? Can they make them feel good and lift wherever they stand? Those all make sense to me.

Brad Turpen:
I think that's you bring up some great points. And sort of the flip side of that, as you can see, physicians who probably won't be successful in leadership roles because they are doing those other things. They're making decisions without the input of the nursing team or they're, you can tell by their responses to a situation that they're first thinking of what's how does this impact me versus how does this impact us? To me, those are the kinds of things that cause you to say, well, that maybe that person could serve the organization in a different role versus a leadership role.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Make sense. Brad, what kind of approach do you take initially to engage physicians in leadership roles or in how the sausage is made? How do you engage them?

Brad Turpen:
To me, it's really about being transparent, particularly I think in large organizations have this sort of us versus them we versus them mentality, the physicians and this entity called admin But, it's trying to break down those relationships and be transparent about what's going on in the organization, it really feels like, and especially a lot of the physicians I work with are in primary care and they take care of the whole person. And so the idea there is to help them see the whole organization, not just what's in their world on a day-to-day basis. So what's going on in other departments? How are we doing as an organization? What's important from a strategic standpoint? Why an initiative that might seem unrelated to what they do on a day-to-day basis benefits their patients or benefits their service? And just I think through that transparency, helping them see things from a big picture standpoint really helps, I think then be effective in their own areas.

Jesse Arnoldson:
That's great. Brad, what kind of training do you provide that helps physicians become better equipped to make decisions, plan for the future, guide their organization? What kind of tools or training do you give them?

Brad Turpen:
Well, we're on a pretty shoestring budget, so we don't do a whole lot. What we try to do with our medical directors specifically is journal discussions. We have done book clubs in the past. We, our new executive director for physician services, has led the group through some training on rounding. Which we're rolling out in the organization where our physicians and the executive that they work with in tandem are going to go throughout the organization and round with the staff. And I think that's going to be a really good experience for them and help them understand, again, that big picture about what's going on throughout the organization.

Jesse Arnoldson:
That's great. Tell me let's double click on that rounding thing. Have you guys already initiated it? Have you have physicians gotten out and started to do it?

Brad Turpen:
They have. We do that as an executive team and we've kind of rolled it out with the physicians. Their first phase was really just getting out and about connecting. So as an example, the medical director for the emergency department going over to the imaging department and saying, how are things going over here? Do you guys have everything you need? Is there anything that we're doing as a department that's impacting you guys? Are there any employees who need to be recognized? Are there any other physicians on our physician team that you would like me to recognize? And it's a lot of those Studer principles from the physician perspective. And we've really started to see good early indicators of success with the program.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Can you share an example of one of those early, early wins?

Brad Turpen:
Yeah, well, the example just with the imaging department and the ED doc to continue with that. So I think for a physician to hear about another physician on his team that he leads who especially for ED Docs, because they're in and they're out, right. the high five each other every twenty four hours and they don't really see each other after that.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Right.

Brad Turpen:
But to hear about Dr. X is doing a great job. Every time he asks imaging to come over to take care of the patient, the patient's well prepared. They have managed up the imaging department so they're feeling it's a positive experience for the patient and for the staff member. That doctor follows up promptly with the imaging department. So those, that's feedback that wouldn't necessarily get to the doctor who's doing all the right things had we not gotten some of that information out of staff.

Jesse Arnoldson:
I love it. That's great. Well Brad, you and I are in complete agreement here in just engaging physicians into leadership roles. It's incredible the difference it can make in an organization when you bring that point of view to the table and develop natural leadership into something skilled and affect, it really can make a huge change for anything from a small clinic to critical access hospital like we have in Emmett. Anything else, Brad, any other words of wisdom before we part?

Brad Turpen:
You know, I would like to mention one more thing that I think is important, that the role of physician leader plays that we didn't talk about, and that's really those relationships that they have with their peers are different than relationships we have. And we just have to acknowledge that. And oftentimes there's maybe a really critical message that has to be shared with the physician, not necessarily corrective action, but maybe there's an initiative that we're not all on the same page with. And that message being carried by a physician leader versus by executive leader. I think there's value in having that where you're, you're kind of in lockstep with the physician leader as an executive and you're both saying the same message and they're delivering the message to their peers. I've seen that be received significantly better.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Absolutely. And that makes me think in closing, you know, there can be times from the administrative side that we just go and we make decisions and we make plans and we get going and we push initiatives and projects, sometimes without the clinical or provider point of view, and that that can be detrimental to an organization. And so just for our listeners, it's important that you engage your physicians, not just the lead physician, but to try and engage the providers in your in your organization, in different aspects of the practice just so that you get the holistic view as you're making decisions that will impact patients, your staff and especially the physicians, I've gotten that feedback quite often in the past of making decisions that directly impact physicians without them being at the table is one of the worst ways that you can divide between us and them going back to where we started, Brad.

Brad Turpen:
Yeah, great point.

Jesse Arnoldson:
Yeah. Brad, thank you for being on. I'm looking forward to chatting with you in the next episode. For all of our listeners, before you go, make sure that you subscribe so you can stay up to date on all of the most current MedMan information and episodes. We'll see you next episode.

Jay Holmes:
Thanks for tuning in to the MedMan podcast, we hope you enjoyed today's featured guest.

Jesse Arnoldson:
For the show notes, transcripts, resources, and everything else MedMan does to help you level up, be sure to visit us at MedMan.com.

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