FROM THE CHAIRMAN

by Michael Gregory, M.D., Chairman

Sometimes it is About the Destination

July 11, 2008

“Apogee is where you end up.” One of our physicians said that to me a few years ago and it has always stuck with me. But what did he mean by that? He went on to say that he had been in private practice for 15 years and before that had a brief stint with a multi-specialty group but that Apogee was differ-ent. He then said that Apogee is what he had always hoped to find in his professional life, a collegial group of doctors that was passionate about the practice of medicine and the care of patients. This leads me to our 5 year strategy. Shhhh... this is top secret stuff. Apogee has only 2 strategic goals. We have already talked about the Hospitalist Promise. The second is creating a Destination Work Place for all our people, but especially our doctors (this goes back to the fact that we are a physician group).

A destination work place is the place you want to end up, not a stepping-stone on your way to something else. We have lived this in many ways without formally recognizing it.

For example, I have always believed that you create opportunities for your star talent or your competi-tion will. Frankly, this was (and remains) one of the primary drivers for our growth. Take the young talented physician working under a great program director. If that young doctor wants to be a PD someday, then the existing PD will probably have to keel over and die. Not exactly a sustainable strat-egy for advancement. However, inside a growing organization like Apogee new opportunities come up all the time and at Apogee that young physician can and will be a PD someday. And, nobody has to die. This applies not only to our physicians but to ev-eryone at Apogee. Our home office is chocked full of people that started at one job and have grown into more challenging and hiring paying roles, some on multiple occasions. So part of creating the destina-tion work place is creating opportunity but there is so much more.

A true destination work place brings with it chal-lenge, reward, excitement and sometimes-genuine fear of failure. Without the possibility of failure suc-cess lacks meaning. And meaning is what it really is all about. Your work should be important. Important to you and to the people you serve. There is no more important work than caring for your fellow man. What we do is monumentally cool. They make TV shows about us and people watch them because we are so cool. My goal is to make sure we don’t loose sight of this and that as a group we remain focused on why we do what we do and why it is so impor-tant. That importance can be summed up in one word, patients. The next time you are having a bad day I want to think about any one of our patients. I promise you, they are having a worse day than you. That patient is counting on you. Why? Because what you do is important; to patients, their families, and I hope to God to you as well. This focus makes Apogee special and frankly better than other groups. You should be proud of what you do here for lots of reasons not the least of which is that you are part of a group that is the best in the world at what it does. More on this next time.....

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