5 Why Coaching & Consulting

Let’s bring joy back to medicine!

Coaching, Mentoring, and Consulting for Physicians and Healthcare Leaders

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Our Services

  • Ideal when:

    • Your job is adversely affecting your personal well being.

    • Your life obligations are stunting your professional ambitions.

    We help by:

    • Identifying the root causes of your work-life imbalance.

    • Re-aligning your work and life priorities so that they complement each other.

    • Holding you accountable to yourself by ensuring that your actions align with your stated goals.

    • Developing sustainable habits, workflows and mantras that promote long term personal and professional fulfillment.

  • Ideal when:

    • You have a professional goal but need guidance on how to get there.

    • You are feeling stuck in your career.

    • You are making a career change and would benefit from support through the transition.

    We help by:

    • Converting your goals into attainable objectives with clear steps.

    • Addressing cognitive distortions and negative self talk.

    • Expanding your mentoring mosaic.

    • Building on your existing strengths and developing new one.

    • Identifying and mitigating barriers to your success.

  • Ideal when:

    • You are facing an unexpected or seemingly insurmountable leadership challenge

    • You’ve been placed into a leadership role on short notice, without adequate preparation

    • You are looking to expand your leadership toolkit

    • You are having difficulty motivating your team towards a goal.

    • You want a better understanding of your leadership style and how to best use it.

    • You would benefit from external mentorship from an experienced leader.

    We help by:

    • Diagnosing your leadership challenge(s).

    • Identifying the benefits and risks associated with your leadership style

    • Expanding your leadership toolkit

    • Reviewing the elements of successful team leadership

    • Helping you to understand your “Leadership Why” (i.e. why do I choose to lead?)

  • Ideal for trainees:

    • Who need an external mentor.

    • Who have struggled to meet professionalism-related core competencies from the LCME or ACGME

    • Who need professionalism monitoring due to a performance lapse

    We support by:

    • Providing trainees with one-on-one, personolized or small group mentor-coaching

    • Providing professionalism monitoring for trainees who have experienced a professionalism lapse

    • Developing and monitoring performance improvement plans

    • Challenging cognitive distortions and negative self-talk that is so pervasive among trainees

  • Ideal for clinical leaders who:

    • Are having difficulty with inefficiency, excessive errors, or poor patient satisfaction.

    • Are losing revenue due to missing key metrics

    • Would benefit from external expertise to evaluate their workflows for waste, risk, and inefficiency.

    • Are looking to improve workflows through better incorporation of technology.

    We help by:

    • Using Lean Six Sigma methodology to analyze existing workflows for inefficiencies, waste, and error-proofing opportunities

    • Recommending opportunities to integrate or optimize technology into your workflows

    • Performing root cause analysis to identify the contributors to risk events, inefficiencies, and errors.

    • Conducting a gap analysis between the current and ideal states.

Meet our Coach & Consultant!

Dr. Cruz is a visionary physician-leader with experience in academic, FQHC, and private practice settings. He is a husband, father, coach, mentor, and process improvement nerd. Dr. Cruz has lived experience thriving in the face of adversity. He is dedicated to improving work-live balance and career opportunities for health care professionals.

Mario Cruz, MD, LSSCGB

My Coaching Values

  • I am contagiously optimistic. I believe in my clients. Optimism is what allows one to develop ambitious goals towards personal fulfillment and professional success.

  • We are truly partners in this effort. Together we’ll maintain a laser-like focus on your goals - and when your actions are inconsistent with those goals, I’ll hold you accountable!

  • Creativity allows you to think outside the box….It is key to becoming “unstuck”. Through our work together, we will identify and address the incorrect assumptions and negative self talk that limit creativity and keep you from seeing the big picture.

  • Bravery means taking action, even when you are afraid. It is the fear of risk (real and perceived) that paralyzes so many physicians; keeping them stuck in unfulfilling situations. Together, we’ll analyze and mitigate these risks, making it easier to be brave!

  • Resiliency is the ability to thrive in the face of adversity. These skills are necessary to a long and fulfilling career in medicine. Through our work together, we’ll re-build your resiliency skills, apply new habits, and adopt useful mantras. When the next challenge arrives, you’ll be ready!

  • You control so much more than you think…and also less than you think! Having a clear understanding of what is under your influence and what isn’t will give you the agency needed to thrive for the rest of your career.

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  • Practicing, Board Certified Pediatrician (17 years)

    • Training

      • Undergraduate - Union College (Psychology / Biology)

      • Residency - St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children

      • Chief Residency - Jefferson Einstein Hospital Philadelphia

    • Clinical Leadership

      • Medical Director (8 years)

      • Founding Medical Director for a pediatric FQHC Practice

      • Experienced in turnaround, realignment, start up, and sustaining success phases

      • Stablizied and expanded clinical operations through the COVID Pandemic

      • Expertise in EMR optimization, workflow improvement and risk-mitigation

      • Integrated behavioral health, dental, and SDOH screening into primary care settings

    • Educational Leadership

      • Clinical Associate Professor rank

      • Associate Residency Program Director (3 years)

      • Site Clerkship / Rotation Director (6 years)

      • Mentor for dozens Scholarly activity, Quality Improvement & Advocacy Projects

      • Experienced with the development and execution of performance improvement plans

    • Certifications

      • Lean Six Sigma, Green Belt

      • Educational Scholarship (Academic Pediatric Association)

    • Recognition & Awards

      • Recipient of many awards for mentorship, service and teaching (Including the prestigious Golden Apple award)

    • Publications and Scholarly Activity

      • Emphasis on mentorship, professional development & advocacy

Coaching & Consulting Packages

Introductory (2-Session) Coaching Package $250

Ideal for Individuals who are:

  • Struggling with work-life balance or a leadership challenge but aren’t sure if coaching is right for them.

  • Looking for a low-cost, low-commitment coaching introdcution

  • Interested in a thoughtful, practical gift for a loved one in medicine who could use additional support from a mentor or coach (much better than a pair of socks or a picture frame!)

  • Comes with two, 45-minute sessions. Together, we will:

    • Conduct a preliminary gap analysis to determine why your current state differs from your ideal state. We’ll also come up with 3 concrete steps to help close this gap.

3-Month (6-Session) Coaching Package $1,500

Ideal for individuals with:

  • Clear goals and short-term challenges.

  • Examples include:

    • Settling into a new leadership role with a need to expand your current leadership toolbox.

    • Setting yourself up for an internal or external promotion

    • Tweaking to your workflows and lifestyle to decrease the risk of burnout.

    • Re-establishing your career after time away

6-Month (12-Session) Coaching Package $3,000

Ideal for individuals with more complicated challenges. Examples include:

  • Screening positive on a burnout questionnaire

  • Being told by a colleague or friend that you don’t seem as fulfilled as you used to

  • Adjusting your career in response to a new change, such as the birth of a child, a caregiving need, or other life circumstances.

  • Considering a career pivot but not completely sure if that’s the right thing to do

  • Leaders with insufficient mentorship facing leadership challenges, such as a realignment or a turnaround.

9-Month (18-Session) Coaching Package $4,500

Ideal for:

  • Individuals who are looking to mitigate risk associated with a career pivot.

  • Leaders who are facing profound leadership challenges (such as an organizational restructure), are lacking mentorship, and feel like they are “holding it all together” without adequate support.

  • Physicians who are already experiencing high levels of burnout and cynisim, with very low work satisfaction. Work and life may be interfering with each other to a great extent.

Group Coaching 90-minute Sessions $100 per participant

These are topic focused, facilitated conversations with up to 6 individuals. Sessions work best when participants are in similar career stages or have similar needs.

Topics may include:

  • Work-Life Balance

  • Professional Development

  • Leadership Skills

  • Communication challenges

  • Workflow efficiency

  • Negotiation

  • Negative-Self Talk / Cognitive Distortions

  • Time Management

Consulting Services $250/hr

We offer consulting or intermittent consulting services to clinical and academic systems. Examples include:

  • Workflow analysis

    • Root Cause Analysis

    • Process Mapping

    • SWOT Analysis

    • Value-Stream Mapping

  • Individual or group coaching for employees

  • Leadership and professional development training for clinical leaders and junior faculty

  • Performance Improvement Plan development and monitoring for employees and trainees

Contact Us

Interested in working together?

Book an appointment or fill out a contact card!

We can’t wait to hear from you!

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