Free Form Friday: Quality Dashboard

Congratulations to Dianna Jernigan, RN, MSN, director of quality, risk management, and education at Cobre Valley Regional Medical Center in Globe, Ariz. for winning a free seat at the 15^th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium. Jernigan submitted a quality dashboard form that the organization uses to get a quick snapshot of how practitioners are doing with certain quality measures, such as Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Providers and Systems survey results and core measures. Jernigan says the dashboard is a quick and concise way to look at the information, and has led to increased accountability among the medical staff.

“It used to be, we had someone in medical records that reported the core measures and turned them in and the report only went to administration; no one else really ever saw it,” she says. “Now we have someone who gets that information, it comes here to this report, than all of the directors are able to see it and be held responsible for their part in those scores.”

Here is a copy of the quality dashboard.

Featured free webcast: ACOs influence on MSPs

By now, you’ve probably heard the acronym ACO a few times at your organization. Although there are still many questions, one thing is for sure: ACOs will create changes throughout the healthcare industry, including the medical staff office. For MSPs, what this most likely means is a change to how practitioners are credentialed.

Bruce D. Armon, Esq., a legal expert in corporate healthcare law, will present a free 30-minute webcast next week about the MSPs role in an ACO formation. Armon is managing partner of Saul Ewing LLP’s Philadelphia office and co-chair of its health law group. He is also a member of our panel of highly-respected experts presenting at the 15th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 10-11, in Orlando. For more information on the symposium, click here.

To sign up for this free webcast, call 781/639-5599 or click here.

Get creative, get 50% off price of CRC Symposium

One thing I’ve learned quickly in this role as credentialing editor is that MSPs love to share their great ideas with other MSPs. They know the stress their MSO faces and if they have a solution to a common medical staff problem, they don’t want to keep it a secret. With that said, HCPro wants to provide MSPs with a way to share their knowledge at the 15^th annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium. As part of the conference offerings, a poster session will be held; it’s an informal way for hospitals to share their medical staff office successes with each other, network, and exchange ideas and information.

Accepted poster presenters will receive a 50% discount off the price of two symposium admissions. Sorry, but those already registered for the symposium are not eligible for the 50% discount (but you could send someone else from your organization).

Any and all ideas are welcome. Some poster topics to consider include the following:

• How to train or incentivize medical staff leaders
• How to avoid negligent credentialing and malpractice claims
• How to conduct OPPE and FPPE
• How to develop a thorough and efficient credentialing processes
• How to develop privileging criteria and delineation of privileges

If you have a great idea for a poster and want to present it at this year’s conference, please  download the attached CRC poster application, complete it, and e-mail it to kkondilis@hcpro.com. Thanks, and I look forward to receiving your application.

Free Form Friday: FPPE proctor evaluation form

Congratulations to Vicki Tauer, our March winner of the 15th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium free seat contest. Tauer, MSM, CPCS, CPMSM, is the supervisor of medical staff services at Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, Ohio. Her medical staff office recently revamped its FPPE proctor evaluation form to make it more user-friendly for proctors.

Here is a copy of the FPPE proctor evaluation form.

For more information on the CRC Symposium, which takes place May 10-11 in Orlando, click here.

Patient Satisfaction Blog Series for CRC 2012

Easier?  It can make my job easier?

You are now experts at improving the three physician-specific questions on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey:

• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?

I mentioned last week that this would make your job easier. How can that be? The following are some of the benefits that come from having satisfied patients:

• Fulfills patient priorities and wants
• Improves professional standing
• Improves compliance with recommended treatments and follow up
• Reduces liability risks and costs
• Improves staff retention and satisfaction
• Improves physician satisfaction
• Reduces unnecessary calls, returns to the ED, and professional aggravation
• Improves clinical outcomes and measures

There are other benefits as well. If you think back, you can probably find an example for each of the above from your own journey in the medical profession (as either a patient or provider). Happiness (satisfaction) is contagious!

Hopefully this series has whetted your appetite to do further reading, research, and reflection on improving patient satisfaction. Although “because the government says so” may be adequate motivation for some, the real motivation should come from our desire to provide the best patient care possible. After all, isn’t that what we are all about?

Editor’s note: William Mills, MD, MD, MMM, CPE, FACPE, CMSL, FAAFP, is a featured speaker at the 15^th annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 10-11. He will be speaking on using patient satisfaction scores to drive improvement as well as how to privilege low- and no-volume practitioners. For more information, click here.

Free Form Friday: New Agenda Topics

Thanks to Shirley Petry, CPCS, for submitting this form showing how she keeps track of new medical staff meeting agenda items during her busy day. By keeping this form near her phone, Petry is able to quickly get the pertinent information from the requestor regarding the agenda item, and can then put it in the appropriate medical staff meeting file when she has time. To read about how this form has helped Petry, click here.

To see a copy of the form, click here.

Patient Satisfaction Blog Series for CRC 2012

Blah, Blah, Blah?

As I mentioned in my last post, there are three physician-specific questions on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey:

• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?

This post will deal with tips to improve your scores on the explanation question. By now, I’m sure you would make Emily Post proud of how polite you are. (For those much younger than I, she was the queen of etiquette.) I also expect you have made some brilliant diagnoses as a result of your improved listening skills. Now it is time to focus on how you explain things to patients and increase those scores at the same time. Your patient shouldn’t feel like Charlie Brown talking to his parents and just hear “blah, blah, blah,” when you are explaining important health related issues.

Patients (those are the horizontal people in hospitals) are often not at their intellectual peak while hospitalized. Remember this is our workplace—not theirs—so we need to be a little more diligent when explaining complex, emotionally charged issues.  Here are a few pointers that will help you with your ability to explain what’s going on in a way that the patient may understand:

• Provide more information than you believe is necessary
• Provide the option of having another person in the room to hear the information, take notes, and ask questions
• Encourage patients to write down their questions in between visits. This allows them the opportunity to think about the previous interactions and formulate questions that specifically address their fears and concerns
• Ask patients if they need any more information

Remember that we often get caught up in our jargon and patients “appear” to understand as they don’t want to disappoint their physician or appear not so bright.  Ask follow-up questions that probe their understanding. You may be surprised by how much your patient did not understand once you start asking them these questions.

So go forth and improve the satisfaction of those we serve, while simultaneously improving quality, publicly reported measures and making your job easier. I couldn’t resist. This will make your job easier. Read next week’s post to see how.

Editor’s note: William Mills, MD, MD, MMM, CPE, FACPE, CMSL, FAAFP, is a featured speaker at the 15^th annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 10-11. He will be speaking on using patient satisfaction scores to drive improvement as well as how to privilege low- and no-volume practitioners. For more information, click here.

Patient Satisfaction Blog Series for CRC 2012

I’m Sorry, What Did You Say?

As I mentioned in my last post, there are three physician-specific questions on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems HCAHPS survey. They are:

• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• During this hospital stay, how often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?

This post will deal with tips to improve your scores on the listening question.  Hopefully you have tried to be a little more respectful (as discussed in my last post) and have found it rewarding.  So let’s improve your listening skills now.

You have probably figured out this is a perception issue, and you are correct. The following tips have been shown to improve the patient’s perception that you are listening:

• Sit down during the conversation portion of the visit
• Ask open-ended questions and listen with empathy
• Use “reflective” listening (paraphrase, clarify, ask for understanding)
• Offer a physical gesture, such as a handshake, a touch on the shoulder, or a pat on the knee
• Make eye contact with the patient and family
• Pay attention to the patient and not the chart or cell phone

Although these tips improve the perception that you are listening, you actually do need to listen carefully.  Remember back to medical school when the wise attending said that the patient will tell you what is wrong with them if you will only listen?  My experience is that they were right.  How about your experience?

Editor’s note: William Mills, MD, MD, MMM, CPE, FACPE, CMSL, FAAFP, is a featured speaker at the 15^th annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 10-11. He will be speaking on using patient satisfaction scores to drive improvement as well as how to privilege low- and no-volume practitioners. For more information, click here.

Free Form Friday: CRC symposium free seat contest winner

Congratulations to Kim Pepmeier Everett, medical staff office coordinator at Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, IN, for winning a free seat to the 2012 Credentialing Resource Center Symposium! Everett submitted an agenda tracking form that she and her colleagues in the medical staff office created a few years ago. If an item needs to be reviewed by multiple committees, it is documented on the form. This ensures that the item is reviewed by all necessary committees, and in the proper order.

“By utilizing the agenda tracking form, many phone calls have been eliminated asking, ‘What committees need to approve this item?’ or ‘Does the MEC need to see this document to review by the sections and services?’ Those questions are answered with the receipt of the electronic PDF file [of the agenda tracking form and item for review]. We truly don’t know how meeting agendas were developed prior to the use of this form! It’s been a lifesaver for the medical staff office,” says Everett regarding the form.

Here is a copy of the agenda tracking form.

Interested in winning next month’s free seat at the CRC Sympsosium? E-mail kkondilis@hcpro.com for details.

Featured webcast: Assessing the competence of low- and no-volume practitioners

Create strategic solutions to privileging low- and no-volume practitioners with advice from two leading medical staff and credentialing experts. In this online program, Yisrael M. Safeek, MD, MBA, CPE, FACPE, an experienced physician leader and former Joint Commission surveyor, and Sally Pelletier CPMSM, CPS, a national credentialing and privileging expert, walk medical staff leaders and medical services professionals through steps to develop a working strategy to establish competency for low- and no-volume practitioners.

Take a peek at the agenda:        

• Contributing factors to the increase of low- and no-volume practitioners
• Governance documents that hamper the hospital’s ability to effectively manage low- and no-volume practitioners (i.e. link membership and privileges)
• How does low volume affect competence
• Matching privileges with competence
• Building a strategic approach to low- and no-volume practitioners (e.g. intended practice plan, medical staff development plan)
• Working strategies to address low- and no-volume
• A medical staff culture that feels an obligation to the low- and no-volume practitioners
• Types of data sources
• How to compile and present the data in a meaningful way

This webcast will be presented on Tuesday, February 21 at 1 p.m. To learn more or to register, click here.