Diagnosing Clinical Talent (As published in Talent Management Magazine)
by Ken Lahti, Ph.D. - Director of Product Strategy & Development, PreVisor   

HR's Role in Improved Healthcare
There is a lot going on in healthcare right now. Medicine is transforming with innumerable innovations and an ever deepening understanding of human health and biology. Care delivery systems are evolving to reach more people, including remote and under-treated populations. And practices are improving based on management and behavioral sciences, along with new technologies. Amidst all the action – and all the opinions – there is one thing everyone agrees on: at the end of the day, it's all about patients. Quality care for people who seek it is the goal. So, how can we help?

It is not HR's role to change the financials of our healthcare system (phew!), at least not directly. Our contribution, as talent management professionals who specialize in staffing or developing or managing the people assets of organizations, is to improve care through the people who deliver it. In short, better people means better care. Through effective talent management, we can help identify who is most likely to be successful in particular healthcare roles, and we can help employees maximize their success from day one and throughout their career.

Spending the Dollars
Although we cannot fix everything about the healthcare system, through good talent management programs we help make more productive and effective healthcare organizations. Organizations that make better decisions based on valid information about their people – who to hire, who to promote, who needs which training to be effective – spend their HR dollars more wisely and generate a significant return on investment (ROI) from improved performance, retention, and engagement of their people.

In healthcare, quality of patient care directly impacts organizations' bottom line. Today, patients have easy access to more information than ever before about their healthcare options, including online reviews of quality of care. Now we can all make more informed choices as healthcare consumers, based not only on our own experiences, but also on a providers' reputation and quality ratings.

The federal government has also instituted a program of incentives tied to formal patient satisfaction surveys. The HCAHPS survey (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) is a nationally standardized survey that enables valid comparisons of patient's perceptions of care across hospitals. The government even publishes the survey results for the public, comparing thousands of healthcare organizations in a searchable database (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov). It's not surprising, then, that patients are voting with their wallets.

People, Patients, and Personality
Employees of healthcare organizations are key drivers of the patient care experience. If you think about your own recent healthcare experiences, how you were treated by the staff – from the physicians to the nurses to the technicians and the billing folks – probably played as big a role in your overall experience as the exam or treatments themselves. And this criticality of frontline healthcare employees in the patient care equation means that there's a huge opportunity for talent management practices to be important tools for improving patient care.

What does good care look like? Likely, we all have our own definitions. However, they probably touch on similar themes: you are treated with dignity, respect, and empathy; you are provided with accurate information and instructions; your concerns are listened to, and your questions answered; and, of course, you are given the right treatments/care for your situation.

In fact, if we look at the HCAHPS survey that was created by the federal government to serve as the national standard and benchmarking tool for patient care, we find these and related themes addressed. HCAHPS uses about two dozen core questions to measure:

• how well nurses and doctors communicate with patients
• how responsive hospital staff are to patients' needs
• how well hospital staff help patients manage pain
• how well the staff communicates with patients about medicines
• whether key information was provided at discharge

The survey also address the cleanliness and quietness of patients' rooms, as well an overall rating of the hospital, and whether patients would recommend the hospital to family and friends.

Communication, responsiveness, pain management, even room cleanliness… there definitely appears to be much more to quality patient care than just whether the care provider has the necessary skills and experience. In other words, technical expertise of the healthcare provider is important and necessary, but it's just one element of patient satisfaction with care. Knowledge, skills, and professional judgment that a care provider has developed through training and clinical experience clearly impact quality of care. But there is this whole other side that deals with relating effectively to people and genuinely listening to them, showing that they are respected and that their needs matter. This is not just about expertise; this is about personality or character.

You can call it bedside manner, or you can call it plain old customer service. The point is, this 'soft-skills' stuff matters to patients.

Talent Management and the Opportunity in Healthcare
Because patients' healthcare experiences are driven primarily by the employees with whom they interact, we have an opportunity as HR professionals to improve patient care through better talent management. But what does effective talent management look like, exactly? Well, talent management encompasses a variety of processes, programs, and technologies, so effective talent management is not just one technology or process…it's actually three things. Effective talent management is the combination of efficient processes, science-based people measurement, and a winning game plan:

1. Talent Administration – Effective use of communications technologies and automation can dramatically improve the efficiency of talent management processes. For example, the use of online recruiting tools can help you reach a wider yet targeted audience and can accelerate the application and evaluation process.
2. Talent Measurement – Scientific assessment tools can be used to measure the competencies and skills of candidates and employees alike to produce objective, credible, and meaningful decision-support information. For example, the use of employment tests, structured behavioral interviews, simulations, and multi-source performance measures (e.g., 360s) can all produce valid and objective competency information regarding people's readiness and potential for success in particular roles or in particular organizations. Valid assessment tools can be used not only in hiring and promotion decisions, but also to inform and guide employee development by highlighting key competencies that are strengths or opportunity areas or by periodically assessing current skills, knowledge of policies and practices, or even professional standards.
3. Talent Strategy – For long term success and organizational survival, talent management processes should be aligned and integrated with the overall business strategy. The specific challenges faced by your organization based on its services, market position, competitors, and customers all create certain specific demands regarding people resources. To respond to those demands, we need to be able to combine workforce analytics and a deep understanding of the organization's business strategy and operational climate in order to project the talent implications of anticipated changes in the business. An effective talent strategy informed by workforce analytics can drive changes in recruiting practices and inform talent redeployment programs related to organizational changes and growth.

When you combine efficient technology-driven talent processes (e.g., recruiting, staffing, performance management) with valid decision-support systems (e.g., pre-employment assessment, promotional assessments, structured performance evaluations) and a strategy that ties these processes directly to your organizations' goals and objectives, you are doing Talent Management right. And if we do talent management right in healthcare organizations, we can start to improve the lives and care experiences of millions of patients through our most important asset: our people.

Healthcare providers want to improve care while controlling costs. Talent management can help. We can improve care through more effective talent management, by bringing the right people into our organizations to work with us and our patients, and by helping our people grow and stay knowledgeable and engaged. Let's not miss this chance to do our part.

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At Children's Healthcare, it's All about the People

One of Fortune's Top 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2009, ranked No. 8 in Top 10 Companies in Atlanta this year by the Atlanta Business Journal, and making the Top 10 list five years running for Leading Pediatric Hospitals in the nation (U.S. News and World Report), the not-for-profit Children's Healthcare of Atlanta organization (www.choa.org) is "committed to enhancing the lives of children through excellence in patient care, research and education.”

Achieving this kind of national recognition is not by accident or luck. As Sarah Evans, Ph.D., Assessment and Organizational Development Consultant for Children's, shares, "We focus on people – our own workforce and their impact on the patients and families we serve. The efforts put into talent management: strategic planning, measurement and development, are connected and purposefully driven. The results of our human capital initiatives are shown in survey results, low staff turnover, and in some cases accolades.”

Dr. Evans outlined some of the challenges Children's has addressed. The organization is one of the fastest growing pediatric health care institutions in the nation, having experienced significant expansion over the past decade, with even more growth projected for the next ten years. Maintaining excellence isn't easy.

Human resources, working with the executive team, recognized that to continue delivering on their promise of excellent care, one of their first priorities was a need to identify employees who were ready to step into leadership roles today. They also determined they needed to add more individuals to the pipeline, who could not only guide the business, but could lead and develop people who will continue to deliver the high quality care Children's promises.

The first step in the leadership assessment and identification project was to align an existing leadership competency model to the current business strategy and organizational needs. The competency model was refined using a rigorous process that included interviewing current leaders to find out which competencies were effective and areas where gaps existed.

The next phase was a review of their internal assessment processes against the new leadership competencies, to ensure that measurement of leader performance was consistent with the expectations at Children's. The work was completed within a conservative budget, and showed Dr. Evans' team that they needed to select assessments that delivered the most value quickly.

"We used a multi-faceted approach to gather data, including a new 360-degree feedback tool linked to our leadership competencies. We also captured performance information and leveraged self-report tools to measure facets such as personality. The value of this approach was that we integrated the information to provide feedback to the leaders who were assessed as well as their managers," explained Dr. Evans. "The comprehensive, objective data helped to set the stage for a powerful development opportunity between the leader and boss. The goal was for this data to drive a more open honest dialogue and result in a rigorous development plan and outcome for each leader.”

Children's Leadership Competencies are also being used for talent and succession planning. As a result of this HR initiative, the team at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta expects to identify a pool of ready leaders, close the time to fill internal positions and fill important succession plan gaps.

"Our culture is so strong and specifically geared to deliver excellence in care to patients and their families – we have a very familial work environment. It's preferable for our leaders to come from internal hires, and to stay here. Strong leaders who value people as much as operational excellence is core to our success,” concluded Chief Learning Officer, Larry Mohl.

Talent management can indeed impact quality of care.