Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas is an international authority on winning business, director, board and business development, corporate transformation and future organisation.....
Contact Colin Coulson-Thomas
Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas
PRESS RELEASE
Practice Leadership is the key to improved healthcare
Practice managers can make a huge impact upon the experiences of patients and the quality of healthcare if they become more entrepreneurial according to Prof. Colin Coulson-Thomas. Speaking to a conference of practice managers – those who run doctors practices – in Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall he called for a more creative approach to social entrepreneurship and a greater commitment to professional development.
“Opportunities for entrepreneurial approaches to healthcare abound” claims Coulson-Thomas. “Changing the built environment, lifestyles, leisure activities, diet, approaches to learning, and people’s assumptions can all impact upon heath, while confronting challenges to health such as global warming, the risk of international pandemics and the threat of terrorism demands imaginative solutions.”
Coulson-Thomas believes “The vision and determination of practice managers can lead to more responsive, accessible and relevant healthcare. Practice mangers need to move on from being an occupational group and develop the characteristics of a profession. Experienced practice managers should step up and become practice leaders.” He outlined a work and project based approach to learning that would develop the required competences.
The Professor believes “Practice leaders can focus excessively upon internal practice issues and current targets to such an extent that they miss opportunities for creating a better tomorrow. Understanding external trends and developments and how these will impact upon patients and communities, and communicating a clear vision of what is needed to seize opportunities and confront challenges are vitally important”.
“Opportunities for entrepreneurial responses abound” according to Coulson-Thomas, “A new generation of support tools can help health professionals to assess and address healthcare needs, while the patient experience can be transformed in institutional settings. Remote monitoring and diagnosis can become part of the intelligent home.”
Practice mangers need to cooperate with other groups and organisations. Coulson-Thomas suggests “Collaborative activity can change aspects of lifestyles and improve health, while the shared use of facilities can serve a wider range of related needs.”
During his keynote address which opened the ‘Management in Practice’ conference of over 500 practice managers Coulson-Thomas outlined his research which identifies what high performers within certain groups do differently from their peers. “In all the areas we have examined there are a relatively small number of superstars and the good news is that their superior approaches can be captured and shared.”
Coulson-Thomas feels that the numbers of people managing healthcare practices, and their importance to the community, is such that a Profession should be created: “Best practice needs to be identified and spread and there are now cost effective ways of equipping professionals and knowledge workers to excel at difficult tasks.”
Over 4,000 organisations have participated in Coulson-Thomas’ Winning Companies: Winning People research programme. The findings are consistent across sectors, corporate nationalities and different sizes of organisation. The results – which are relevant to public bodies as well as commercial organisations - are summarised in ‘Winning Companies: Winning People; Making it easy for average performers to adopt winning behaviours’ (Colin Coulson-Thomas, Policy Publications, 2007). The book which gives examples of how job support tools can be used to make it very easy for average performers to adopt winning ways can be ordered from: www.coulson-thomaspublications.com while details of related support services can be found on www.colincoulson-thomas.com
Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas is an experienced chairman of award winning companies and author of ‘Winning Companies: Winning People’ (Policy Publications, 2007) and other books and reports. He has reviewed the processes and practices of over 100 companies, helped over 100 boards to improve board and/or corporate performance, and spoken at over 200 national, international and corporate conferences in 35 countries. He can be contacted by Tel: +44 (0) 1733 361 149 or via www.colincoulson-thomas.com
07 Jun 2008
Colin Coulson-Thomas