When a health care center in Bangor, Maine first introduced the idea of team huddles to improve communication within the organization, the setup was simple. The goal was to have a physician hold an informal meeting with their clinical support team.
There was just one problem.
When it came time for the first huddle, the physician didn't show up.
The clinic administrator at the time said the general goal of improved communication wasn't a specific enough outcome to make the huddles effective. The focus had to be homed in on how huddles could be made useful for those involved.
That is exactly what the health care center’s team did. The purpose of huddles became an opportunity to briefly preview the team's day and identify opportunities for improvement or support.
Ten years later, the huddles evolved into high-energy daily meetings for the entire practice prior to clinic sessions.
Brief daily huddles between physicians and other team members can be a highly effective way to boost productivity and strengthen communication within a medical office. These sessions should focus on action plans for the day, highlight necessary adjustments to that day's workflow, and last no more than 15 minutes.
A recently updated AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit, "Daily Team Huddles: Boost Productivity and Teamwork," offers a three-step guide to introducing and maintaining these quick check-in opportunities. The toolkit also features a team huddle checklist that any practice can follow or modify to create efficient, effective check-ins.
Set logistics and expectations
The first step to introducing and valuing team huddles is to understand the difference between them and a team meeting. Team meetings occur less frequently, last longer and are often focused on a specific in-depth topic or problem that needs to be solved. Team meetings tend to also be more formal—perhaps located in a conference room.
Team huddles, by contrast, are meant to be held in a more informal location such as a workstation. The goal is for the setting to feel comfortable and natural. All participants should feel free to discuss confidential topics.
It is understandable for health care leaders to feel daunted by the idea of introducing another meeting to what are likely already busy schedules, and the fact that team huddles should be daily can make the concept even more overwhelming to consider. However, clinic operations do typically become more efficient after introducing daily team huddles to practice workflows.
One of their strengths is that team huddles are also designed to be short. Sometimes teams are able to tackle the topics of conversation in as few as five minutes.
It is important that huddles are scheduled at a time that is convenient for all participants. Many practices choose to host huddles either in the morning before clinic hours or in the afternoon before additional clinic sessions.
As the leader in physician well-being, the AMA is reducing physician burnout by removing administrative burdens and providing real-world solutions to help doctors rediscover the Joy in Medicine®.
Start huddles and build team cohesion
With logistics worked out, the next step is beginning to huddle. It is important to be consistent with starting and ending each huddle on time.
Initially, it may make sense to limit the huddle to one or two discussion topics. The toolkit checklist is an easy guide to pick topics of conversation, including:
- Reviewing the day's schedule.
- Identifying scheduling opportunities.
- Determining patient needs.
- Sharing reminders about any practice changes.
Consistent huddling will likely lead to more natural teamwork and team cohesion. Staff will likely begin to identify patterns and use learned information to better prioritize work and time allocation throughout the day.
This pattern recognition often shifts team members to think proactively instead of reactively. This change in mindset allows practices to become more efficient, flexible and adaptive.
In some cases, health care organizations looking to introduce huddles benefit from hiring a professional coach who can lead sessions from an unbiased, third-party perspective.
Another important component of effective huddles is that they include celebrations of success. This could be as simple as a shout-out to a teammate for something they did well or stories about exceptional care for a patient.
Assess and improve
The lesson that the care center in Bangor, Maine learned is important for all health systems to remember when introducing and maintaining huddles. For success, it's essential to constantly ask the question: How can huddles be more useful to those involved?
When team members remain engaged and enthusiastic about huddles, they will continue to provide value. To make sure that it is happening, it's important that practice leaders be open with themselves and with team members. Practice leaders should feel comfortable turning to individual participants and asking how huddles could be more useful to them and to their patients.
It is also important for health care leaders to track clinical factors that could be impacted by team huddles to assess their effectiveness. The toolkit features an evaluation form template that readers can use to further evaluate what works and what could be improved about the team huddle experience.
Health systems are investing in team-based solutions
Expanding on daily team huddles by investing in team-based care, health care organizations aim to rebuild stability and reduce physician burnout.
These powerfully illustrative examples of improved team-based care come from health care organizations that are part of the AMA Health System Member Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
Confluence Health trains care teams to support physicians
- The Confluence Health system in Central Washington is taking bold steps to implement innovative strategies to cut stress, enhance work-life balance and foster a culture of support. And these efforts are being noticed. One way is by offering training for medical assistants, nursing and other care team members to help decrease in-basket burden.
Geisinger works with pharmacy teams to tackle prior authorizations
- Leaders at Geisinger wanted a way to reduce physician burnout. Thanks to a team of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, they are doing just that by tackling one of the biggest headaches in medical practice today: prior authorization. Geisinger created a centralized pharmacy services team made up of pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and pharmacy support associates to support the prior authorization process in a more efficient and effective way. The team manages about 90,000 prior authorizations a year.
Northwell Health made adjustments to workflows in the EHR
- Northwell Health, which has more than 12,000 credentialed physicians and is New York’s largest health system, fosters a supportive environment that values teamwork through adjustments in workflows in the EHR. For example, Northwell Health has an initiative to make it easier for physicians to delegate certain tasks to medical assistants. This required support from an IT standpoint to update the workflow in the EHR to allow physicians to assign tasks to medical assistants.
Ochsner Health relies on its leaders to show how teamwork matters
- Winning the battle against physician burnout requires more than just awareness, say leaders at Ochsner Health in New Orleans. It requires broad collaboration and a multifaceted approach. But it is important not just to have teamwork but also to make it apparent to everyone in the organization. That is where leadership can help by showing that teamwork is a priority.
Sanford Health partners with schools to boost teams
- Recruitment and retention are not just about the physicians in communities Sanford Health serves. If support teams aren’t given a comfortable space to work in to take care of patients, they will seek work elsewhere. Sanford Health has been partnering with universities and technical colleges in its region to ensure it has the allied health professionals needed to keep health systems and medical practices running. This includes surgical technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists and certified nurse anesthetists.
Sutter Health offers help with documentation
- At Sutter Health, physicians saw a decrease in time spent on the EHR each day, dropping from 54.53 minutes to 46.69 minutes a day—a 14% reduction. This is largely due to help from documentation specialists. Medical assistants at Sutter Health are trained to help with the care experience, from documentation to being a chaperone, ensuring the physician can focus on the patient.
The Southeast Permanente Medical Group has IT at the table
- Bringing IT to the table really began with The Southeast Permanente Medical Group’s previous work to improve operational inefficiencies with its “Pebbles in the Shoe” campaign. This effort set out to identify and reduce inefficiencies and documentation burdens by offering a three-week challenge period for clinicians and staff to submit ideas, or “pebbles,” for improving efficiencies. From there, teams work behind-the-scenes to address these issues throughout the year.
AMA STEPS Forward resources offer innovative, physician-developed strategies that allow doctors and their organizations to thrive in the new health care environment. These resources can help you prevent burnout, improve efficiency and enhance patient care.
