All Entries Tagged With: "patient care"

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?

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?

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year … Is it?

This is the time of year when medical staff services professionals usually see an increase in the number of “temporary” privileges that are required in order to cover critical patient care needs. I used to say, “If it’s Friday at 4 pm before a Holiday weekend, I’ll get a request for temp privs around 3 pm.” Sometime the request came in a little earlier, but it was certain that temporary privileges would be needed before the day ended.

There is considerable pressure on MSPs to process requests for temporary privileges as quickly as possible in order to meet patient care needs. Please keep in mind that our one key responsibility is to never short-change the patient. I’ve been in such situations where a thorough credentialing process could not be completed before the end of the day. In those instances, I had to deliver the bad news; the request could not be completed and temporary privileges would not be granted. This is certainly not a popular spot to be in and is one that doesn’t make friends. However, it does protect the patient which is our ultimate goal.

For MSPs, this is the most wonderful time of the year to be reminded of the vital role we have in ensuring competent patient care. Patients may never know the gift they have been given, but we’ll know.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Carole  La Pine, MSA, CPMSM, CPCS