In the medical setting, electronic devices are supposed to help improve communication between physicians and various individuals and functions in the hospital.
The medical executive committee (MEC) at Better Times Hospital has proportional representation. Many years ago (no one is sure exactly when), the MEC agreed that each of the 15 clinical departments should have at least one seat on the MEC regardless of its size. For every...
The National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) is taking a stand to protect the identities of healthcare organizations, physicians, and other healthcare practitioners. In September 2011, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) shut down its public-use data file after...
Let's be honest-in the past, physicians at some organizations secured access to new devices and technologies by putting pressure on the hospital CEO. "The louder they yelled, the more likely they were to get what they wanted," says Virginia Gortych-Barnes, MD, physician...
When you attend conferences focused on medical staff services issues, you may come home eager to implement a new strategy or update a form, but because of the information overload, your efforts may come screeching to a halt. As you try to remember what a speaker said about peer...
Last month, we discussed having a comprehensive communication plan that allows the medical staff to communicate with all of its members efficiently and effectively by color-coding correspondence. Although critical to the medical staff's relationship with its physicians, a...
Understanding which medical staff members are eligible to serve as medical staff leaders can be challenging, particularly in markets in which hospitals compete aggressively with each other for patients and resources. On HCPro's e-mail talk group "Medical Staff Talk," one...
Two patients arrive in the ED with influenza during an outbreak. One is a 75-year-old man with several other chronic conditions and the other is a 45-year-old woman with three children. Who gets the last ventilator? Is it the woman because she is younger and has three children...
Current medical staff leaders may not realize that one of their primary responsibilities is finding physicians on the medical staff who have the ability to lead but whose latent talents may not have come to the notice of current officers, nominating committees, or hospital administrators. This...
One of the greatest challenges facing administrators today is providing the next generation of physician leaders with the basic education, training, and experience they need to become fully competent.
