Health & Medical
Navigating change
How Tom Boat got everyone on board to implement improvements at UC Physicians
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business | October 2009
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Journeys start with a map and a destination, but Dr. Tom Boat knows he’s not going anywhere until his foot hits the pedal.
His action-ready approach is changing the face of UC Physicians, a physicians group at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine with 650 physicians and about 1,250 other employees.
The clinical faculty members at the college — where Boat also holds the title of executive associate dean for clinical programs — were operating under 16 specialty practices. Each was like its own corporation with separate accounting, marketing and other functions.
“Unless the clinical practice was better integrated and better coordinated in the future, it was unlikely that it was going to compete as effectively as it had in the past,” Boat says.
The previous leadership tried coordinating the departments twice before Boat’s July 2008 arrival but with no success.
To make it happen, the third time around would require a focus on execution, even if it meant taking smaller steps to find doses of success.
“We’re going to make sure that every step of the way, that step is a step forward and that people recognize it as progress,” Boat says.
Of course, he first had to learn about the company’s starting point. As initiation, he charged managers with outlining the current processes and adding their opinions of what was and wasn’t working.
“I had to get to know the programs and understand what their strengths and challenges were and begin to work with the system at the level that it was at, rather than coming in and saying, ‘I know exactly what to do,’” Boat says. “So tailoring the change process to the situation is really important.”
But then, Boat focused his attention on getting the company where it needed to go. Along the way, data served as his GPS, showing where the company had been and where it was headed. Most importantly, he used it to show that change was indeed manifesting.
“I think that execution in this process is really, in the end, what makes the difference,” he says. “You can evaluate all you want. You can plan all you want. But if you don’t execute on that plan and do it in a successful way, then it probably is going to be a failure.”
