Learn about the team’s scope of work for the coming year.

Group Physician Advisory Services: Tim Kelly, Managing Consultant
Each issue, we’ll feature one of TPG’s business divisions to gain a high-level view of their work. This quarter, we spoke with Tim Kelly about how the GPAS team is building and innovating within their workspace.

As we are all aware, the healthcare industry took (and continues to take) a massive hit due to COVID – the emotional weight of the pandemic, physically demanding hours, and conflicting legislation caused the industry to experience worldwide mental health trauma, overarching staff burnout, and defection from the field at staggering rates.

So who helps care for our caretakers when they are struggling? GPAS does.

TPG’s Group Physician Advisory Services department has worked with some of the largest multi-specialty medical groups in the country for more than 20 years. “Ours is a highly specialized division,” Kelly says. “GPAS works exclusively with healthcare entities; that gives us a depth of nuanced understanding that is unmatched in the market. Our team concentrates on improving physician wellbeing and the physician experience and helping large healthcare entities attract and retain talent using total rewards as a tool.”

So how can healthcare entities best support their people? “Through robust programs centered around wellbeing and behavioral health, a focus on DE&I to foster an inclusive work environment, renewed focus on core values, and configuring benefits programs to support the whole person and their unique needs,” Kelly explains. These needs could be anything from consulting with clients on attracting and retaining talent to helping put together targeted mental health guides to combat physician burnout, defection, even suicide. Healthcare entities think of GPAS as an extension of their HR departments, serving physicians during some of the most difficult moments of their careers.

What’s the Plan Moving Forward?
What sort of growth and innovation are Kelly and the GPAS team looking toward now that COVID is thankfully on the decline, yet the substantial fallout of the pandemic is just now being understood?

“The past year was about gaining a detailed understanding of the various challenges being faced by the medical group community,” says Kelly. “We focused on community involvement – building relationships within healthcare associations, pushing out educational content, and working to advance meaningful benefits strategies.”

In 2023, the emphasis is on data – specifically, collecting and analyzing data to help better support major benefit decisions within the healthcare industry. “GPAS understands the breadth and limitations of the various data that are currently used by healthcare organizations. Our team is currently mid-stream in a research initiative that will result in best-in-class insights for medical groups to attract and retain talent.”

The resulting dataset will work to further GPAS’s commitment to providing distinctive expertise to their clients and to the medical group community. “We’re working to help the physicians – the people themselves – come out on the other side.”

Learn More About GPAS
If you’d like to know more about our specialized team and the work they do, reach out at gpas@tpgrp.com, visit thepartnersgroup.com, or look into these resources and appearances:

* A position paper titled “Aligning Your Clinician Benefits With Your DEI Strategy,” a collaboration between TPG and Ochsner Health
* Sponsorship of the American Medical Group Association Northwest Regional Meeting on October 6, 2022
* A forthcoming article by Tim Kelly in the Journal of America’s Physician Groups titled “Addressing Burnout to Fulfill the Quadruple Aim”
* A forthcoming article by TPG’s Holly Fraser-Witt and Chase Sterling in DMEC’s @Work Magazine titled “The Architecture of an Intentional Emotional Wellbeing Strategy”
* A webinar co-presented by Fraser-Witt with Virginia Mason for AMGA called “Making the Connection – High-Impact Organizational Communication” on December 7, 2022

For more information on these or any related topics, consult with TPG’s GPAS division at gpas@tpgrp.com.