Author Archive for Todd Morrison
Doctor loses privileges over verbal abuse claims; accuses hospital of retaliation
A doctor loses privileges at one Kentucky hospital due to allegedly abusing nurses, according to the Louisville, KY Courier-Journal. In one case, Christodulos Stavens, MD is reported to have sarcastically told one nurse who called to say a patient had no pulse and blue fingernails: “You’re the medical expert. What do you want me to do about it?”.
The cardiologist says he’s being retaliated against for helping open a competing hospital in the area, and says he’s only few feathers in the course of doing his job. As per the Courier-Journal:
“I’m always the advocate for the interests of the patient,” he said, acknowledging that “sometimes I need to step on some toes.”
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
Friday’s CRC contest winners
Due to the number of entrants, we decided to pull two winners on Friday for the CRC registration contest. Congratulations to Sheri Patterson, an independent medical staff services contractor based out of Newport, Oregon, and Kelly Emrich, a credentialist specialist at St. Mary’s – Good Samaritan Health Care in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.
Click here to access Sheri’s application audit tool and Kelly’s essay on The Joint Commission can be found here.
Just a reminder that this is the last week of the contest for registration to CRC – keep those entries coming!
Todd Morrison
Managing editor
“Physicians not only learn from their errors but remain haunted by them for the rest of their lives”
Sherwin Nuland, the former physician who wrote How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter has a new book out called The Soul of Medicine in which he asks physicians to talk about their most memorable patients. According to USA Today:
Rather than tout the medical conundrums they’ve solved or the lives they’ve saved, some shared tales about patients whom lay readers might think they’d most like to forget.
There’s the elderly Holocaust survivor who reluctantly agrees to have surgery for removal of a cancerous colon polyp, only to die three days later from a complication of the operation.
…
“Nuland shows that even extraordinary doctors make mistakes,” says physician/author Kenneth Ludmerer, an internist who is a professor of both medicine and history at Washington University in St. Louis. “As one sign of their professionalism, these physicians not only learn from their errors but remain haunted by them for the rest of their lives. In this sense, some doctors become the ’second victims’ of medical errors,” he says in an e-mail.
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
Contest entry: Application audit tool
The latest entry in our drawing registration contest comes from Sheri Patterson. As some of you know, Sheri’s an independent medical staff services contractor based out of Newport, Oregon. (Full disclosure: Sheri is currently providing interim staffing and consulting services to The Greeley Company, a subsidiary of HCPro.)
Sheri contributed an application audit tool which can be accessed by clicking here (cred-file-compliance-audit-tool ) but also had this to add:
Let me start by stating that I have been a medical staff services professional for over 17 years and in that period of time, you tend to develop certain ways of both approaching and completing the every day tasks of the MSO. In my travels I have learned a very valuable lesson: There is more than one road leading to the same destination! [more]
Contest entry: Article on partnering with physician recruitment
The latest entry in our registration contest comes from Sandra Cady, the director of medical staff services at Yuma Regional Medical Center in Yuma, Arizona.
Sandra wrote an article on partnering with physician recruitment that was published in the Arizona Association of Medical Staff Services newsletter last October. You can read Sandra’s article by clicking here: partnering-with-physician-recruitment-by-sandra-cady
Thanks, Sandra.
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
This week’s contest winner
I’d like to congratulate Diane Hendrickson, who was drawn as this week’s free registration drawing contest winner. Diane, a medical staff services coordinator at St. Alexius Medical Center in Bismarck, North Dakota contributed an entry on who should respond to a pediatrics code blue in the absence of a pediatric intensivist or pediatric specialist. Her entry can be found by clicking here.
Again, just a reminder that names that are not drawn are included in all subsequent drawings.
Keep those entries coming…and good luck!
Best regards,
Todd
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
Contest entry: Quality indicators dashboard
The latest entry is a quality indicators dashboard submitted by Lisa Smith, a clinical process improvement project manager at University Healthsytem Consortium in Oak Brook, Illinois. Thanks, Lisa!
Access the spreadsheet by clicking here: dashboard_-worksheets_-template
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
Contest entry: “I made it through the survey alive.”
Our next entry comes from Kelly Emrich, a credentialist specialist at St. Mary’s – Good Samaritan Health Care in Illinois. Kelly has a great post about her first encounter with The Joint Commission:
My name is Kelly Emrich and I took a position as the Credentialing Specialist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Mt. Vernon, IL. I had only been in this position for a few months when Joint Commission showed up. I have worked in the hospital for 6 years but this was going to be the first time I was going to have to sit down and not only speak with the Joint Commission Surveyor, but defend my applications, processes, etc. I was absolutely petrified. I barely knew what I was doing and to top it all off the Surveyor wanted to do a presentation in front of the entire Medical Staff with my Credentialing information. I thought I was going to have a heart attack right then and there. I am one of those people whose face immediately gets red when put on the spot and a rapid heart beat that ther person sitting next to me can hear. I was still new to the position, still new to the Medical Staff, new to Joint Commission and there I was…I just new I was going to make a fool out of myself and never be able to show my face again. Luckily, with my charm, good sense of humor, and our processes being in order, I made it through the survey alive and in good health. [more]
New contest entry: Joint Commission standards quiz game
We have a few new entries in our drawing for free registration to the CRC symposium in Las Vegas, all of which came in this morning. The first comes courtesy of Cindy Sparks, the manager of medical staff services at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida.
As Cindy explains, “I presented a summary of the 2009 JC standards to our local Chapter of Medical Staff Services and made it helpful as well as enlightening and entertaining at the same time. I created a Power Point presentation in the form of quiz game. We formed two teams and each team had a turn in answering the questions. Everyone had a great time and we all learned something new.”
To access the PowerPoint file, click here: quizgame
Thanks, Cindy! I’ll post the other two shortly.
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor
Sample letter for the Criteria-Based Core Privileges seminar
In addition to the sample letter Emily posted below explaining the merits of the CRC symposium you can use with your superiors, we’ve also created a similar letter for the Criteria-Based Core Privileges seminar to be held May 13, one day before the CRC symposium begins. Though it’s drafted as a “stand-alone” letter, it can easily be combined with the CRC letter given that the two events are held at the same location.
More information on the seminar, including the cost, can be found by clicking here. Let me know if you have any questions about the agenda, or any other aspects of this one-day seminar.
The letter can be found by clicking here: criteria-based-core-privileges-seminar-letter
Todd Morrison
Managing Editor