Dr. Acey Albert’s career bridges the worlds of clinical care, technology, and healthcare leadership. From coding medical apps before smartphones to leading high-performing clinical teams across the country, he’s brought innovation and clarity to every role he’s held. We invited Dr. Albert to share his perspective on what physician leadership should look like, how to lead across regions, and what it takes to drive meaningful change in value-based care. His answers are candid, thoughtful, and packed with insights for any physician thinking about stepping into leadership.
1. You’ve held leadership roles across clinical operations, medical content strategy, and population health. How have these different roles shaped your view of what physician leadership should look like?
Physician leadership is unique. We are, first and foremost, physicians. We start our careers uniquely qualified for a very specialized role that stays with us for a lifetime. What we do cannot be done by anyone else on the healthcare team. We have direct influence over so much of healthcare: quality, access, outcomes, cost, efficiency, team morale, patient experience….you name it! We also happen to be the main revenue generator for the entire system.
No matter the output of a company or division, if they’re looking for physician leaders, they want our insight into or influence over other clinicians, and more times than not, they need to tap into ways to improve on those factors we control. We have to enter leadership roles understanding that’s the company’s motivation and expectation. We also need to understand that, as a result, we have an incredible amount of leverage as physician leaders.
That being said, every role I’ve had has taught me that while serving the organization, a physician leader also needs to honor the profession, those we care for, and the greater good. We can’t merely be figureheads, there for a CEO to point at and say, “See, we have a doctor on the team! Trust us!” Strong physician leadership not only delivers for the company, but serves as the active, honest voice for their colleagues even when there are things the company might not want to hear. In most organizations, we’re also the guardians of patient safety and quality of care. We must have the fortitude and opportunity to speak up when we think there’s a risk to those. If not, we’re not leaders…we’re servants.
2. At Carbon Health, you oversee multi-state clinical operations. What leadership strategies have helped you succeed when managing across regions and teams?
Succeeding in a multi-market role like mine at Carbon Health, or even in a large single-market organization like the one I had in Colorado Permanente Medical Group, depends almost entirely on having the right team of capable, aligned, and empowered local clinical leaders. You can’t be everywhere at once, so you absolutely must have a group of direct reports you can trust to deliver. This should be your top priority at all times.
Whether you’re hiring, managing, developing, or nurturing, focus on making sure your reports are skilled, embody the company mission and values, and have the room to make your KPIs a success on the ground with their teams. You have to be somewhat ruthless about this! If you’re hiring and you have doubts, don’t hire. If they’re not performing on KPIs, manage them up or manage them out, ASAP! If you’re developing and they’re not advancing, remediate rapidly or move on. Spend your time on those who are producing, and move fast on those who are not.
3. You chaired a clinically integrated network that participated in a Medicare Shared Savings ACO. What did that experience teach you about driving value-based care as a physician leader?
Unfortunately, it taught me that “the right thing for patients” isn’t necessarily the universal motivator I thought it was in our profession. It’s not faith for everyone. It is mine. It’s my North Star, and always will be, but noble as that may be, physicians are motivated individually just like everyone else.
“Good for patients, good for us” was the promise of value-based medicine, so I thought it should be a slam dunk. We’d finally earn a living based on what we accomplish, not how much we do. The expert physician who nailed the diagnosis or controlled the chronic illness in one or two visits would be paid better than the less-skilled clinician limping those patients along for four or five visits. That’s utopia for a good primary care physician! While that message connected with a few, it didn’t seal the deal. We were lagging in attribution, as a result.
We had two major barriers: First, one of the most successful ACOs in the country had been established on our back porch. Member physicians were seeing huge VBM payouts in their initial few years and the ACO had subsequently enrolled a huge chunk of the primary care physicians in the area. We hoped that would provide a “See, it can be done!” example. It accomplished the opposite. We were left with all of the skeptics. The majority of their income was still based on volume, and our initial messaging wasn’t enough to overcome their status quo. As the new kids, they also had no reason to believe we could perform as well for them financially. Those conversations never involved “doing better for patients.” To my dismay, they always revolved around money. Fortunately, I had a partner in leadership who spoke that language really well, and we were successful MSSP participants in year one of the CIN.
Ultimately, you have to dig into what motivates each person you’re leading. Their “what’s in it for me?” is rarely negotiable, and if it doesn’t align with yours, you’re not going to convince them otherwise.
4. Many physicians feel uncertain about transitioning into leadership roles. What advice would you give to someone who’s interested but unsure how to begin?
Firstly, have the guts to jump in. Hesitation is a terrible trait in leaders. If you think you can help, don’t stay quiet. Make your interest known to other leaders in your organization.
Secondly and most importantly: Be humble enough to recognize what you don’t know and put in the work to learn your organization and your people. The worst leaders I’ve encountered in 20 years of doing this have been the ones who step into a role with the deadly combo of arrogance and a business degree. They start with the assumption that the MBA has taught them everything they need to know, believe they have all of the solutions, and are ready to make sure everyone around them know it! That’s not leadership! It’s self-servitude! If you’re not taking the time to gain insights from your people and your own observation, you’re just mouthing off and losing the trust and respect of everyone around you in the process.
My practical advice for a first step into leadership: Look first for problems in your day-to-day. That’s easy, right? Here’s the challenge: Don’t immediately go to your leadership complaining about the problem. Study the issue, form a team, work on a solution, try to implement it, and see what happens. If it succeeds, let your leader know! If it doesn’t, pivot and try again. If you can’t find a solution after three tries, also let your leader know! You’ll still stand out. Personally, I’ll take a new leader who takes meaningful efforts and fails much more seriously than those who idly luck into better KPIs.
Overall, physician leadership isn’t about a specific role or title. It’s about insight and action. You don’t need a leadership title to start leading.
5. In your article on Physicians Practice, you believe that physicians are natural leaders. What are the top 1–2 mindset shifts or skills doctors need to embrace to thrive in leadership?
For many physicians, the initial impetus into leadership is changing things that aren’t working in their daily routine. Often, those things exist on a very small scale, and that’s OK! As I’ve said, those things are great for cutting your teeth in leadership, but the biggest mindset shift is looking at the system around us differently. Zoom out from your particular clinic or department to gain greater perspective and ask what might be influencing those maladapted processes. Even more importantly, look at how those processes might be impacting patients.
The other critical mindset shift is one that should be easy for us, as scientists, but of which we lose sight easily. You have to apply the null hypothesis to your change efforts. What do I mean by that? The null hypothesis is the basis of the scientific method, and it presumes failure! As physicians, we can get very fixated on success. We’ve lived it our entire academic lives, but in the process we learn (and forget) that every scientific experiment starts with the premise that your interaction will not result in any significant change. We need to approach leadership the same way. Most interactions won’t change anything. That doesn’t mean the effort was for naught. Study the failure, adapt, and try again. The most meaningful improvements are those forged in the fire of repeated failure.
6. At Mozibox, we believe that when physicians lead, healthcare advances. We’re on a mission to help increase the percentage of physicians in leadership roles by 50% by 2035. From your perspective, what needs to happen, at the system, training, or individual level, to make that vision a reality?
The challenge is that our schooling and training is already far too packed. With medical knowledge expanding exponentially, there’s just not a ton of room to nurture leaders in the course of medical education. Sure, you could lead a medical school club or organization or get involved in student government, but those opportunities are somewhat limited. Chief residency is even more limited, and frankly, seems like more of an administrative role than true leadership.
I was lucky enough to start my career in an organization that invested in physician leadership from day one. Kaiser Permanente’s embrace of physician leadership was, and probably still is, a rarity in the industry. Few small and medium practices could possibly do what they did. With the consolidation trend we’ve seen in medicine over the course of my career though, medical delivery organizations now have the scale to create professional development programs. They’ve figured out that clinicians in their practice will only follow other physicians they know and respect, so they look within for those leaders. The next necessary step is building the leadership and management stills of those physician leaders. While there’s no degree to hang on the wall, these on-the-job curricula provide a richer learning environment and deliver a greater return on investment for the company than any MBA program out there. More organizations need to get on that train. More of us in existing roles need to demand it.
