Today’s (and Tomorrow’s) Medical Group Leadership: Success Factors and Strategies
The landscape for medical groups continues to shift, with more groups associating themselves with health systems. In turn, medical group leadership grows more complex, especially...
The landscape for medical groups continues to shift, with more groups associating themselves with health systems. In turn, medical group leadership grows more complex, especially as both independent and affiliated groups expand through mergers and acquisitions and incorporate diverse care facilities and offerings—from ambulatory surgery centers and clinics to virtual and home-based care.
Presidents, CEOs, and other senior medical group leaders must possess greater operational and strategic acumen than ever before. Medical group leaders within health systems are oriented to successfully integrate with partner organizations and unify their organizations’ many components into a cohesive, high-performing enterprise. In an environment shaped by cost pressures and heightened revenue expectations, effective leaders must not only drive ambulatory growth but also collaborate closely with hospital operations to optimize resources, expand capacity, improve access, and elevate the patient experience—key differentiators in an increasingly competitive market.
In our experience recruiting medical group leadership, we have witnessed a demand for individuals with much broader skill sets than in the past, including proficiency in communication, collaboration, and team effectiveness. They must exhibit interpersonal (aka, “soft”) skills such as empathy and relational fluency. Briefly, organizations are seeking medical practice leaders who can use a bit of finesse and creativity to bridge clinical and operational priorities, align with broader system strategies, and lead across varied care settings. Meanwhile, traditional qualities such as integrity and humility remain essential.
In situations in which the medical group has become affiliated with an academic health system, there is an added layer of complexity. Leaders in these environments must navigate the nuanced balance between academic and community needs while crafting and executing integrated strategic plans.
In this article, we explore the key factors that must be considered in identifying medical group leaders based upon our recent experience recruiting for these positions. In addition, we provide insights into the type of individual medical groups should prioritize as they seek their next president or CEO.
Recruiting a Medical Group Leader: Considerations and Challenges
The following trends are influencing medical leadership and therefore the type of individual medical groups are targeting for their next chief executive:
- Operational and Clinical Integration: The central theme in searching for the modern medical group president is understanding that role’s focus on integration, a multifaceted concept touching nearly every function of a medical group’s operation. One primary concern—especially in the context of private practice acquisition but also as many groups grow and expand—is the consolidation of business functions such as human resources, operations, and finance. Clinical integration represents another critical dimension. It involves more than just aligning workflows—it requires finding common ground around the principles of clinical excellence and ensuring that best practices flow in both directions: from the acquired group into the larger organization and vice versa.As an example of integration’s importance, one academic health system we worked with recently had significantly grown its community physician practice and found itself needing a president who could help it transform to a contemporary high-functioning, integrated group as it continued to evolve. The recruitment targeted a leader who had shown previous success at a large, complex group.
Another organization that we and our colleagues served was working through consolidation after merging hospitals and their associated medical groups. This recruitment required a leader who could value the culture of each of the previous entities and inspire a sense of belonging for the newly formed group—a highly nuanced role that required someone with strong personal and political acumen.
- The Continued Rise of Physician Leadership: More organizations throughout healthcare are prioritizing physician leadership. Choosing whether a medical group should be led by a physician or a non-physician depends on several factors—often determined by the organization’s history and existing leadership norms, priorities for the position, the culture of the group, and an assessment of who can be most effective at gaining buy-in across stakeholders. Equally important is determining the organizational structure required to support that leader’s success, regardless of their educational background. In an environment in which relationships often drive success, hiring a physician as president is often an imperative though we encourage organizations to weigh a variety of candidates for their top role, including where the organization hopes to be in five to 10 years and the type of leader needed to get it there.
- Leadership Development: Building relationships and cultivating a shared vision between leaders is critical to aligning strategic goals and operational direction. Leadership structures must be capable of translating clinic-level realities to broader organizational forums and vice versa. Thus, a new medical group leader must actively and proactively support and develop broader medical group leadership.
- Organizational Culture: One of the most challenging and important aspects of integration is the deliberate shaping of organizational culture. This goes beyond accommodating local differences and instead involves establishing a shared set of core values that are experienced and understood across the entire organization. Every physician—regardless of how they joined the medical group—should feel a sense of belonging. A strong, cohesive culture not only supports physician engagement and retention but also strengthens the organization’s capacity for change, facilitates deeper relationships between clinicians and administration, and creates a unified identity for the system. As the saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and thus a medical group leader must exhibit a clear ability to build and maintain a culture that is fundamental to organizational success.
What Type of Leader to Look For
To identify a leader to address the challenges highlighted above, hiring organizations must recruit for a multifaceted executive, whether a physician or non-physician. Such a leader must:
- Be a team player and team builder: Integration in particular is not for the faint of heart and requires courage to lead colleagues towards an ultimate vision of systemness. It is essential to create a compelling picture of the desired future state and demonstrate that the group’s success is likely dependent on a series of compromises. Leading with the “why”— many groups will be better together; why a newly integrated group is greater than the sum of its parts—is essential to setting that vision. The leader must set a vision and align based on mutual interests and common ground.
- Lead with a spirit of curiosity: As medical groups evolve, leaders must balance concern with cooperation and can only act upon what they know. Therefore, leading with a spirit of curiosity is paramount. Leaders must seek to understand best practices before they can encourage adoption. They must seek to understand the perspectives of each group before they can quell concerns. And, ultimately, they must seek to understand honest feedback. Curiosity sets the tone for adaptability and demonstrates a willingness to consider diverse viewpoints.
- Build trust: With mutual goals established and an understanding of the landscape, leaders must then look to establish trust. Developing trust within a newly integrated group is the lynchpin to shaping the organizational culture. The medical group leader earns and engenders trust by being honest, respectful, and focusing on making others successful. Small wins contribute to establishing long-term relationships by building a foundation and demystifying the “other”. Leaders must follow through on commitments and ensure that others are held accountable to do the same. While developing trust takes time, a leadership focus on shared vision and a commitment to understanding will set the stage for successful operations and integration.
- Demonstrate business insight: As the leader of the practicing physicians and advanced practice providers, this executive must balance clinical resource management, deployment of resources, and the return on investment. They must match market demand of primary care and specialty to meet the access needs of patients and the organization in a financially sustainable way. The ability to understand economics as well as make data-driven decisions that drive outcomes are important as medical group leaders face the current healthcare industry headwinds.
Case Study: Growth Plus Alignment
The medical group is a significant success driver when integrated into a health system. For one Southwest U.S. healthcare system, a strategic goal was to continue to grow the medical group in parallel with the system’s acquisition of new acute-care facilities. The leadership team needed to find a medical group leader who could understand their system needs as well as physician needs to help them drive growth and earn their colleagues’ trust. It also sought someone who could position the medical group to work in lockstep with the health system, for the “rising tide to lift all boats.”
It selected a new medical group president to deliver these results. Through collaboration with hospital operational leaders and the medical group leadership, this physician leader is coalescing the needs of the hospitals with the medical group by focusing on primary care access, specialty care partnership, and patient outcomes. They have emphasized a culture of multidisciplinary team care and new program development to utilize assets within the health system (ambulatory, urgent care, surgery centers and acute care). This has led to tighter collaboration in recruitment/retention, communication amongst teams, and sharing of best practice in each respective hospital market.
This leader needed to be forward thinking, engaging, and strategic to bridge the medical group and hospital leadership into systemness. They knew it would take time to gain incremental buy-in and alignment between physicians, APPs, and the facilities. The executive has been curious and results-oriented through high-quality care delivery, achieving key financial measures and managing complexity through teams to gain strong alignment for the health care system.
Broader Support
Even for experienced executives, integrating into a new organizational culture and building trust among diverse stakeholders takes time. A medical group president or leader cannot be expected to have all the answers from Day One. There is a period of adjustment and acclimation. This process can often be accelerated by forming strong internal partnerships and leveraging external support, such as coaching and leadership development activities. We encourage hiring organizations to provide ample support for their next medical group leader, with the understanding that the hiring decision is just the first of many obligations to ensure the new leaders’ success.
Conclusion
In this increasingly complex healthcare landscape, organizations evaluating potential medical group leaders must be attuned to what success in this role truly entails. It is no longer sufficient to look for operational competence alone—organizations must identify leaders who bring strategic clarity, a commitment to integration, and the emotional intelligence required to unify diverse teams and cultures. Understanding what today’s most effective medical group presidents focus on—clinical and business integration, leadership development, cultural cohesion, and trust-building—is essential. These attributes aren’t just nice to have; they are foundational to executing system-wide goals and delivering differentiated care. Clients who seek out leaders with these capabilities position themselves for sustainable growth, operational alignment, and a stronger, more connected physician enterprise.
