Ask the expert: A physician on our medical staff is returning to work after a leave of absence to receive treatment for alcoholism. Who on the medical staff should know?

In an ideal world, the only people who know the reason for a physician’s leave of absence are the members of the physician health committee, the chief of staff, and the hospital CEO. “If more [people] than that know, you lose the trust, confidentiality, and advocacy that physicians expect,” says Dean White, DDS, MS, medical staff advisor at Texas Health Harris Methodist HEB Hospital in Dallas–Fort Worth. 

Inevitably, when a physician disappears for one to three months to be treated at an addiction treatment center or to be evaluated and treated for other impairments (e.g., aging or disease), people start to ask questions. Medical staff leaders should say that the physician is on a medical leave of absence and leave it at that. “People may know or assume otherwise, but we are not going to be the ones to tell them that,” White says. 
Nurse managers may need to be alerted that a physician has just returned from a medical leave of absence so they can keep an eye on the physician, but they don’t need to know what the leave was for. “Nurses know to do that intuitively anyway,” says White about keeping an eye on the physician. “If someone has been gone, they are going to have their antennae up.”

Finally, if a physician had been diverting drugs away from patients, individuals in the hospital pharmacy may need to be alerted so they can ensure that all medications are accounted for, says Steven R. Smith, Esq., with Ober Kaler in Washington, DC. 

This week’s question and answer are from “Reintegrate formerly impaired physicians onto the medical staff after a leave of absence” in the December issue of Credentialing & Peer Review Legal Insider (subscription required).