The aim of this study was to understand how the top managers in Swedish healthcare regard management of physicians in their organisations and what this implies for the managerial role in relation to the medical profession.
Managers of physician clinics should consider organizing practices to ensure that older patients are able to make timely appointments with a personal provider.
These top-level managers actually seem to feel that the manager role in itself does not have enough power to enable management of physicians.
Even though the interviews clearly focused on management of physicians, nearly half of the statements did not deal with the managers' role in the manager-physician relationship.
"Any employee", "any physician", "at-fault-physician", "manager of at-fault-physician", "medical director", and "chief executive director" correspond, respectively, to statements 1 to 6 in Table 1(b).
Personal preference and perceptions of norm and current practice regarding which ME to be disclosed (5 options: don't disclose; disclose if associated with major, moderate, or minor harm; disclose near miss) and by whom (6 options: any employee, any physician, at-fault-physician, manager of at-fault-physician, medical director, or chief executive director) were explored.
However, even though the CEOs had the highest possible managing position in their organisations, many of them argued as if they were actually the immediate managers of the physicians.
And the facilities for that are what we've essentially organized.' (Manager, clinic #4) The interests of physicians and managers in clinics are found to be highly aligned, thereby preventing interest dissatisfaction and competing interests.
A multidisciplinary team for nurse case management, integrating expertise of physicians, radiologists, case managers, nurses, nutritionists, physical therapists, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, social workers, home health care nurses, and hospice nursing specialists, met periodically to discuss treatment direction, to evaluate therapeutic effects, and to provide further recommendations.
In 1997, the formal separation of the two roles was completed, when the role of clinical manager (involving direct administrative management of practicing physicians and other care professionals) also became open to professionals other than physicians [ 15].
