Correlation of leadership and care coordinator performance among primary care physicians

PURPOSE: Primary care physicians have to deal with many aspects of the patients’ health problem, which needs cooperation with other health professionals or even nonhealth individuals. To achieve effective results, the primary care physicians should have leadership and coordinating skills, especially when dealing with the health challenges in Asia Pacific region. The care coordinator role of primary care physicians is important to create the bridge between population and health. This study aims to determine the correlation between care coordinator performance and leadership factors among primary care physicians. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted, and data collection involved a total of 84 primary care physicians who were randomly selected from a total of 44 subdistricts and worked in 40 randomly selected village government-owned primary healthcare facilities in Jakarta. Pearson’s correlation, independent t-test, and one-way ANOVA were used to measure the correlation between care coordination and clinical leadership, transformational leadership, commitment, job satisfaction, and organizational culture, as well as the sociodemographics of the physicians and the professional practice factors. Multiple regressions were conducted to determine the most important factors influencing care coordinator performance. RESULTS: Respondents were mainly female (94%) with an average age of 36 years and were mostly medical doctors without any additional postgraduate degrees (95.2%). There was no correlation between care coordinator scores and organizational culture or commitment. There were positive and significant correlations between care coordinator scores and clinical leadership score (r=0.66; P<0.001), transformational leadership score (r=0.54; P<0.001), job satisfaction score (r=0.31; P=0.004), physician’s age (r=0.34; P=0.002), length of time since graduation (r=0.30; P=0.005), duration of employment at their health center (r=0.33; P=0.003), training in family medicine (P=0.04), and employment status (P=0.005). The most important factors in care coordinator performance were clinical leadership (r=0.53; P<0.001) and transformational leadership (r=0.23; P=0.03), with the total R(2) being 0.47. CONCLUSION: Clinical leadership and transformational leadership were the most important factors for care coordinator performance. Therefore, the leadership skills of primary care physicians are important to be considered as a certain competency in practice to manage various resources and coordinate with related healthcare providers for controlling patients’ illness as well as dealing with the challenges and managing the overall health.