Have you set goals for this year?

It is hard to believe that this is the first column I've written in February. Where did January go? Spring is just around the corner (Phil didn't see his shadow on February 2nd, which means an early spring-good news for those of you who are experiencing really frigid weather right now).

It has been my experience that effective, high-performing medical staff organizations have goals. And goals are much more likely to be achieved if all the members of the medical executive committee know what the goals are and are working together to achieve them. Here are some goals that I've seen medical executive committees achieve in the past few years:

1. Update privilege delineation forms. Go from laundry list forms to criteria-based core privilege forms.
2. Develop meaningful practitioner performance reports/profiles.
3. Update the credentialing process to assure that it is effective and efficient.
4. Institute an audit process for credentialing to ensure that the organization is consistently on target in how the credentialing process is implemented.
5. Study the medical staff committees with the focus on reducing the number of committees and meetings without sacrificing effectiveness of functions.
6. Institute a "performance feedback" process for medical staff leaders and department chairs.
7. Design and implement a medical staff leadership development program.
8. Reduce the time spent in medical executive committee meetings to no more than one and one half hours per meeting.
9. Improve the communication and collaboration between hospital administration and the medical staff organization.
10. Update the medical staff bylaws and other documents to reflect contemporary methods of managing medical staff organization activities and describing the medical staff organization structure.

Medical staff leaders should be able to look back at the time spent in a leadership position and know that more was achieved than just getting through their term of office (or serving as a chair of a committee or as chief of a department) without having been involved in a problem (a hearing, a peer review proceeding, a Joint Commission issue, etc.).

If you are the chief or president of the medical staff, be sure to share your goals with the medical executive committee. Sit down with the director of medical staff services and develop a plan for how the MSP will be working with you and the MEC to assist in achieving those goals.

If you don't know where you are going,
you might wind up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

Until next week,

Vicki L. Searcy, CPMSM
Practice Director, Credentialing & Privileging
The Greeley Company
vsearcy@greeley.com
www.greeley.com