By: Jeremy Neis

A few years ago my family had to say farewell to a pediatric practice that was the only one my children had known since birth.  The wife ran the business side of the practice and the husband was the M.D.  He was one of those rare people who found the perfect vocation to match natural born traits with developed capabilities.  For our kids – he had a gift for keeping them comfortable and calm even when they were in their greatest discomfort (real or perceived).  For us parents – he was able to concisely and clearly share complicated information in a manner that enabled easy discussions and allowed us to painlessly arrive at what could otherwise be stressful decisions.

Both the husband and wife were considerably beyond standard retirement age, but their passion and enjoyment for service to families kept them in the game.  That is until they reached a tipping point related to the difficulty of keeping up with the rate of change.  It wasn’t the clinical side that was challenging as they had maneuvered through decades of evolutions in medicine and patient care.  It was the ever-changing operations landscape that caused their desire to sunset – technology, complex 3rd party interactions and changes in regulatory compliance morphed into a landscape that they were no longer comfortable in.

The story of this family practice is memorable for me for reasons beyond just the emotional impact made on our family.  I walked away with a deeper appreciation of just how committed an organization needs to be in order to sustain.  The pressures to adapt and maneuver through changing ways of doing business will be ever-present.  A primary goal of the information curated in these blogs is to provide business leaders access to insights of evolving trends and opportunities.  The hope is that fewer operations will find themselves like our pediatric friends who awoke to find themselves unable to keep up.

Here is an example, in our resource library, of changing methods and discusses the concept of coaching vs evaluating.