All Entries in the "Physician-hospital alignment" Category
Poll question: Reimbursing for practitioner certifications
The American Board of Medical Specialties approved a new medical specialty for treating child abuse last month. This move highlights the importance practitioners place on regulating their work through certification programs. Medical staffs also value certifications and sometimes make them a privileging requirement.
In this week’s poll question we want to know if your organization helps pay for these certifications. Take the poll below and see how your facility compares to others.
Contest entry: Cut down on med staff meetings
Go to too many meetings? Wouldn’t it be great if we could cut down on the number of meetings required? Hear how one institution made that hope a reality.
Georgiaetta “Poncho” Klebba, CPMSM, medical staff services manager at Capital Region Medical Center (CRMC) in Jefferson City, MO, submitted a best practice on cutting down the number of med staff meetings. The result–medical staff satisfaction and a “tremendous cost savings” for the hospital, she says.
“CRMC reduced the numbers of medical staff department meetings and general staff meetings from four times per year to two times.
Department meetings are held at a local hotel at 5:30 p.m. in April and October with the general staff meeting to follow at 6:30 p.m. The general staff meeting includes dinner and a CME lecture, as well as updates on all new bylaws, rules, regulations, and/or policies that have had chances since the last meeting and reports from the administrative council members on hospital issues. [more]
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:
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.”
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.
Join HCPro for Physician-Hospital Alignment: Practical Tools and Models in Today’s Economy
Join HCPro on Tuesday, June 16, for Physician-Hospital Alignment: Practical Tools and Models in Today’s Economy. During this 90-minute audio conference, Bill Leaver, president and CEO of Iowa Health System, will discuss his organization’s approach to adopting various medical staff models to cultivate successful physician-hospital relationships and improve the bottom line. In addition, Robert “Buster” Mobley, MD, ACPE, executive vice president of medical affairs and quality at St. Dominic Jackson Memorial Hospital in Jackson, MS, shares a physician-economic alignment tool, which helps the organization determine how best to structure relationships with individual physicians. You’ll also hear from William K. Cors, MD, MMM, CMSL, vice president of medical staff services at The Greeley Company, about the need for flexiblity and communication when creating physician-hospital alignment.
I am particularly excited about this program because it will give our listeners real-life examples of how hospitals are adopting various types of physician relationships to adapt to an ever-changing economic healthcare landscape. If you have any questions you would like to ask our speakers, feel free to e-mail me at ejones@hcpro.com. I’d love to hear from you.
We know that budgets are tight, so we’ve dropped the price of this educational program to $199. I hope you can join us.