Archive for June, 2009
Listen to your medical staff. Really listen.
We compiled tips from MSPs about how they achieve buy-in from the medical staff in the August issue of Briefings on Credentialing (available online in mid-July). But MSPs aren’t the only ones who search for medical staff buy-in. Hospitals also rely on them to implement projects.
Benjamin F. Call, M.D., FACC, a past medical staff president, and current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Portneuf Medical Center in Pocatello, Idaho says there are a number of techniques for achieving buy-in. “Our hospital’s gone through a series of transitions in its administrative style of management. There are several things we have done that have really made a big difference,” he says.
The following are some buy-in strategies he’s seen the MSP use that can also be used by the hospital:
Poll question: Have you ever paid for work-related expenses out of your own pocket?
With the economy still in the red, employers’ purse strings are as tight as ever. This penny-pinching doesn’t mean that the need for new office supplies or conference registration fees go away, however. Have you ever paid for work-related expenses out of your own pocket because the need for them outweighed budget restrictions?
Take our poll and find out how you compare with your peers.
Hospital makes physicians’ notes accessible to patients
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is launching a one-year Open Notes campaign, which will enable 25,000 to 35,000 patients to read the notes their physicians write after each visit, according to The Boston Globe. The campaign, which will involve 100 practitioners, is sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is aimed at finding out whether patients who read their medical notes will better remember and understand their physicians’ instructions and catch mistakes.
Physicians, of course, are apprehensive that patients will unnecessarily worry about precautionary tests or take offense to certain comments, including those regarding patients’ weight. Physicians are also worried that patients will e-mail numerous follow-up questions asking for clarification on the notes, which are written for other doctors involved in the patients care and may involve abbreviations and medial terminology that patients don’t understand. For example, a physician may use “SOB” in a medical note, but patients may interpret that, well…differently.
However, the promise of transparency and reduced medical errors makes the experiment worth a shot. It will be interesting to see if patients will take advantage of the opportunity to view the notes and if they find them helpful. What’s your perspective, as a healthcare professional and as a patient?
Free demonstration of Physician Profile Reporter software June 30
As editor of Medical Staff Briefing, I get a lot of feedback about the struggles medical staffs have with designing an effective way to provide physicians with performance feedback. If deciding what to measure isn’t hard enough, compiling the data can make you want to tear your hair out if your technology systems don’t cooperate.
To help get your organization moving in the right direction, I’d like to let you know about a free on-line demonstration for Physician Profile Reporter software on June 30 at 1:00 ET. During the demonstration, Marla Smith, MHSA, a consultant with The Greeley Company, will walk you through how to generate reliable performance reports that can be easily distributed to each medical staff member.
Complying with the Joint Commission’s FPPE and OPPE requirements doesn’t have to take over your life if you have the right tools, so I encourage you to sign up for this free demonstration.
State hospitals layoff MD staff, could private hospitals do the same?
New Jersey state mental hospitals have laid off 16 doctors in order to fix budget gaps, according to the state Department of Human Services. Typically, hospitals do not have the authority to layoff members of the medical staff because most are not directly employed by the hospital. However, some practitioners, such as hospitalists and contracted physicians, are direct hospital employees.
Does this mean MD layoffs can become a common occurrence at private hospitals, as well?
Only time will how common the occurrence becomes, but some private hospitals have already made medical staff cutbacks. “It can happen anywhere and unfortunately there’s a perfect storm because you’ve got decreased Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement, you’ve got increasing bad debt, you’ve got the economic melt down of many hospital’s investments,” says Jonathan H. Burroughs, MD, MBA, FACPE, CMSL, Senior Consultant at The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc., based in Marblehead, MA. “Almost every hospital in the nation is facing budget shortfalls and budget cuts and one of the expenses on the ledger is physicians’ compensation.”
Another source for MSP job searches
There are a number of ways that MSPs search for new jobs, including networking with peers and querying state medical staff associations for tips.
Now there’s another source to add to the list. Rita Schwab added a new feature to her blog, Supporting Safer Healthcare (formerly MSSPNexus) that tracks job lists containing the certifications CPMSM, CPCS.
What other sources do you use for a focused job search? Share your best practices in the comment boxes below.
MD and RN turf battles go back to school with the DNP certification exam
You may have noticed a new certification on the credentialing applications from advanced practice nurses in recent years. The doctor of nursing practice (DNP) is a certification exam similar to Step 3 of the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination that physicians take. The exam is administered by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). However, the degree of similarity is hotly debated by the medical profession, according to a recent American Medical News article.
So, what is each side saying in this debate?
Just for fun: Inside the world of team doctors
If you’ve been near a television set in the past few weeks, you know the hockey (let’s go Pens!) and basketball season playoff games are in full swing. But how much do you know about the practitioners who care for the star athletes?
Check out the article in today’s Boston Globe that shines the light on these celebrity doctors. Although the article doesn’t go as far as interviewing the MSPs who credential these practitioners, it does offer tips about working in a high-pressure environment that we can all use.
Audio Clip: Physician-Hospital Alignment
Wondering whether your facility should pursue a joint venture with several local physicians? Pondering the benefits of gain sharing? Debating over physician employment? Joint HCPro on June 16 for Physician-Hospital Alignment: Practical Tools and Models in Today’s Economy.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Robert “Buster” Mobley, MD, ACPE, executive vice president of medical affairs and quality, St. Dominic Jackson Memorial Hospital last week for a pre-program interview. Here’s an excerpt:
EJ: How does the physician economic alignment tool that you will be presenting during the audio conference help hospital and medical staff leaders make smart decisions with regard to various physician relationships?
RM: We’ve developed a framework tool that actually takes an organization through a process wherein they deal with certain required questions before they make a determination as far as an alignment strategy with a physician. That will include the discussion regarding the strategic value of such a decision. It will include the market assessment and the impact that will have on the local market. It deals with the alignment of the incentives, a very disciplined approach as to the return on investment, as well as an assessment of the threats that might be out there in regard to impact on your hospital’s line of business, as well as the legal perspectives.
Click below to listen to the full mini-interview.
Disclosing practitioner credentials, competency to patients
MSPs have a special privilege when it comes time to choose their own healthcare provider. They know which doctors have the most training in a particular field and which ones have the best competency results performing a particular procedure. They know this because they’ve seen the data on the practitioners.
But – asks today’s Wall Street Journal Health blog – should all patients have this information? What about risky procedures that practitioners can only improve on with on-the-job training. They have to learn on someone, right?
While there are some national Web sites that disclose practitioner quality data, studies have found that most patients aren’t querying them.
What about the data that your medical staff services department collects? Has a patient ever asked you to share that information? Does your organization already share some of that information on a quality Web site patients can access?