Hiring the right Medical Director(s) is a Million Dollar decision. The right Medical Director can not only enhance your program’s quality and reputation, he/she can be a key pillar in your growth strategy. Besides the obvious ability to refer to the hospice, your Medical Director can provide key introductions in the medical community, help with referral conversion, lead your Physician Advisory Board meetings are a few examples.

Most hospices sub optimize the use of their Medical Director(s). As I look back on all the Medical Directors I have hired, I see all the faults and mistakes I have made. But great lessons learned and opportunities to improve. My biggest mistake was hiring Medical Directors based on the number of referrals I thought they would refer (this hardly panned out anyway). I neglected to explore with them their attitudes and believes about opening doors to physician’s colleagues, helping problem solve pending referrals that had a physician barrier, hosting physician dinners and the like. My bad!!! Live and learn because once I corrected this blind spot, I ended up working with some of the best Medical Directors. My program’s quality, reputation and patient census grew.

I also learned one important thing along the way, physicians liked to be asked to help. So ask!!