By Mike Hoban
You’ve probably seen the television show “House M.D.” or at have least heard of Gregory House, a Sherlock Holmes-type of a physician who leads a diagnostic team at a fictional hospital. House is brilliant and relies on his intellectual horsepower and his hunches to find cures to puzzling and life threatening ailments. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that House is cantankerous, insulting, arrogant, insensitive, condescending, impulsive and eccentric. If there were such a thing as “The Executive Derailment Society,” House would be its poster child.
Would a doctor like him really be allowed to conduct himself like that in a real healthcare setting today? Is it okay to achieve results at any cost if you’re able to save lives? Is there a House in the doctor?
My experiences consulting in the healthcare industry and talking about this with several “insiders” including one of my brothers and my daughter Rebecca, both of them docs, suggests that the answer is usually no. Which also means, on occasion, yes.
Hospitals tend to be mission and values driven and most take those seriously and act upon them: Treat people with dignity, with respect, with compassion; stewardship; the patient comes first. House-like behavior from a physician would seemingly not be tolerated at institutions which truly live their values.
Yet, in many hospitals doctors are not employees – they are business partners, so the institution loses some leverage for managing behavior. And doctors with great reputations can be huge cash generators for their affiliate hospital(s).
One executive from a Catholic hospital described the challenge they face with this exact situation. It calls for skillful and courageous conversations to address the Attila-the-Hun behaviors. If not handled with tact, the physician could leave and take her referrals with her. If not handled at all, employees will rightfully conclude that there is hypocrisy and that the values don’t matter as long as you can bring in the bucks. It’s a tightrope walk.
“House” might also be an overbearing engineer, a sharp-elbowed sales person or an offensive Ops Manager, technically gifted but lacking in fundamental people skills. How does your organization handle them?
Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
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