Have your MEC address issues that affect the medical staff

The medical staff must be integrally involved in the hospital strategic plan, and there must be close communication between the medical executive committee (MEC) and the governing board. Therefore, the MEC may want to discuss strategic initiatives or strategic opportunities and challenges proposed by physicians or the hospital.

Many medical staffs have created physician councils out of frustration that the MEC meetings spend so much time dealing with routine business that there’s no time to discuss critical, political, and economic issues affecting the medical staff. If the hospital does not have a physician council, it may need to restructure MEC meetings to allow more time for discussion of strategic issues, the group may spend meeting time for discussion of strategic issues, the group may spend meeting time addressing strategic questions, such as with whom to sign exclusive contracts, whether to build a surgical center, whether to align with an entrepreneurial physician group, whether to get into retail medicine, etc.

Editor's note: This excerpt was adapted from Medical Executive Committee Essentials Handbook, by Richard A. Sheff, MD; and Robert J. Marder, MD.