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09/19/2019

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The S-Curve

By Joseph Chow, MD, President, Ambulatory Care

The S-Curve is a principle often described in business theory.

Picture an “S” as the lifecycle of a business. As a business starts, there is a slow rise as your product or service is used and accepted. You hit an inflection point, where it picks up speed, and you hit your stride. Customers are buying, business is expanding, and outside of growing pains, life is good. However, the next inflection point is important and may be visible or felt on the horizon.  If you continue along as is, business levels off. There can be internal and external forces contributing to this, such as poor management, lack of talent, lack of innovation, or simply put, your competitor is doing it better than you. This is the plateau of the S, where it can regress downward, and the business ceases to exist.

In a similar fashion, the S-curve applies to life.

Think of a scenario, and you’ll likely see it tracks the S-curve. For example, working out the same way will get results only so far until change is made to routine. The key is to continue to grow, improve and innovate, creating a new S-curve on your prior one.

In our division, we are constantly looking at the horizon along that curve. How do we innovate or make our processes more efficient?  We are adding more to make it easy for our patients to come to us. You can make an appointment on your phone, pay your bills online, and ask Siri where our nearest location is. Soon, you will get a text after your visit to let us know how we’re doing. You may also soon get care virtually from home.

But we need our people to help us innovate.

Many of our best suggestions to make our service easier to access, improve quality or enhance safety for patients have come from our colleagues.

What can you bring forward and participate in to help us avoid the next bend in the “S”?  Share some of those stories with us here, whether they apply to business or life.

To learn more about how TeamHealth supports their clinicians so they can provide outstanding patient care, visit our Why TeamHealth site. Are you ready to join a team that supports you and recognizes your impact in providing excellent patient care? TeamHealth has opportunities available nationwide!

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