If an anesthesiologist with a medical degree is faced with a malpractice case, who would your medical staff legal counsel call to serve as an expert witness? Another anesthesiologist with an MD, or a qualified certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA)?
Between mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, exclusive contracts, and physician-owned hospitals and clinics, it’s no wonder physicians find themselves knee deep in conflicts of interest. Unfortunately for medical staffs, these conflicts can hamper peer review efforts.
Is the document you just filed in a physician’s confidential peer review file really considered a peer review document? Are you maintaining meeting minutes in such a way that if a physician sues the organization, he or she won’t be able to use them against the hospital in a court of law?
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) sparked confusion in the MSSD with a new regulation aimed at the verification of legal status: Transmittal 323.
Medical staffs with aging members are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they are obligated to protect patients from the harm that may result from a physician’s age-related mental and/or physical decline. On the other hand, they may also feel compelled to help their beloved...
MSPs are surrounded by data, from initial credentialing documents to ongoing assessments. Some of that information is bound to highlight errors in a practitioner’s performance. What would you do if the medical staff leaders you work with told you to ignore the errors or alter the data to hide...
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) stepped up HIPAA enforcement in a big way this year. The agency handed down more than $5 million in HIPAA settlement fines in one week in March, and in July reached a HIPAA violation settlement with Advocate Health Care in Illinois that carried a $5.55 million...
The Supreme Court of Texas (the "Court") recently held that a trial court failed to adequately review allegedly privileged documents?to determine if they were disclosable pursuant to an exception to the state's peer review statute--before issuing an order compelling Christus Santa Rosa Health...
