HA410 Unit 5 Physician Communication Brief Example

Five Weeks to a First Cardiology Visit: A Communication Brief From a Composite Practice Administrator to the Medical Director, With the Audience Analysis, the Message as Sent and the Choices of Register, Channel and Timing Behind It

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

HA410: Health Care Leadership

Unit 5 Communication Brief

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The practice, the medical director and the figures are composite and bracketed; the message is a course model, not a template for any real practice.

Part 1: Audience Analysis

The analysis asks four questions about the reader, drawn from Munter and Hamilton (2014). Who is the primary reader? [Dr. M.], medical director of the cardiology practice, a heart failure specialist and one of [seven] cardiologists. She controls the schedule template with her partners' agreement. What does she know? She knows the wait is long; patients and referring physicians complain to her. She may not know the figures by type of referral: [31] percent of new referrals are for new heart failure diagnoses, and they wait as long as routine referrals. How does she feel about the subject? Protective of her partners' schedules, which are full, and wary of administrators proposing clinical changes. She has said publicly that patients with new heart failure should see a cardiologist quickly. What would move her? An approach that serves her stated priority, costs her partners little and lets her lead it. Hidden audience: her six partners, who will see the message if she forwards it. Any sentence that sounds like criticism of their productivity will travel. The message is written for one reader and checked for six, because the medical director will forward it to the partners whose schedules it touches.

Part 2: The Message

Subject: New heart failure patients: a two-slot pilot for your review Dr. M., You have said that patients with a new heart failure diagnosis should see a cardiologist quickly. Right now they wait as long as everyone else: a median of [36] days from referral to first visit over the last quarter. I would like to propose a small pilot for your decision. Each cardiologist would hold two new-patient slots a week for new heart failure referrals, released to routine patients if unfilled [48] hours ahead. Based on last quarter's volume, this would cover [about 90] percent of these referrals within [14] days, with no change to total visits. Research on patients hospitalized for heart failure found that those seen by a physician soon after discharge had lower readmission rates (Hernandez et al., 2010), which matters to the system's readmission measures as well as to patients. I have the referral data by type and the slot model ready, and I would value fifteen minutes to walk you through them before you raise it with the group. Would [Tuesday or Thursday] next week work? [Name], Practice Administrator

Part 3: Choices Behind the Message

Register: plain and respectful, short sentences, no jargon from operations. The message proposes rather than asks permission, and it names her as the decision maker. Structure: direct order, because she has already agreed with the goal; the request comes in the second paragraph. If she were opposed to the goal, an indirect order building the case first would fit better. Evidence: one figure for the wait and one study, chosen because a physician reader values data. The full analysis stays in the meeting, not the email. Channel: email, because it is how she prefers to receive proposals and because it lets her read at her own time. A hallway conversation would have put her on the spot; a formal memo would have felt like a committee process she does not control. Timing: sent on a [Monday] morning, after the weekly operations report she reads, and not during the week of the group's quarterly meeting, when she would feel pressed to answer in front of partners. Hidden audience check: the message contains no figure about any individual cardiologist's productivity, and the pilot changes every schedule equally.

How Influence Works Here

The administrator has no authority over physicians' schedules. The administrator's influence comes from exchange: offering something the medical director already wants, a framework Cohen and Bradford (2017) call trading in a colleague's currencies. Here the exchange is a chance for the medical director to act on her own priority, with the administrator doing the analysis and the follow-up.

What Would Change the Message

If she had not publicly supported faster access for heart failure, the message would open with the referral data and a question rather than a proposal. If her partners were already resisting schedule changes, a meeting request would come before any written proposal.

Follow-Up Plan

If she agrees to meet, the administrator will bring a one-page summary of referrals by type, the slot model for each cardiologist and a draft announcement she could send to the group in her own name. If she does not reply within a week, a short second note will offer the data without a meeting. If she declines, the administrator will ask what she would need to see first, rather than taking the proposal to the vice president over her head.

Conclusion

The brief shows that a short message can carry a lot of analysis. Each choice, from the subject line to the day it is sent, answers something learned about the reader.

References

Cohen, A. R., & Bradford, D. L. (2017). Influence without authority (3rd ed.). Wiley.

Hernandez, A. F., Greiner, M. A., Fonarow, G. C., Hammill, B. G., Heidenreich, P. A., Yancy, C. W., Peterson, E. D., & Curtis, L. H. (2010). Relationship between early physician follow-up and 30-day readmission among Medicare beneficiaries hospitalized for heart failure. JAMA, 303(17), 1716-1722. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.533

Munter, M., & Hamilton, L. (2014). Guide to managerial communication: Effective business writing and speaking (10th ed.). Pearson.