Meeting management commandments

Dear medical staff leaders and services professionals,

I recently attended a meeting of a long-standing critical care committee, and it got me thinking about the importance of physician involvement in various medical staff committees. Not too long ago, this committee’s charter had been forgotten, and although the medical director had envisioned it as a vehicle for physicians from various specialties to collaborate on critical care policies and procedures, attendance was dwindling.

This critical care committee illustrates the challenges many medical staffs face: getting physicians to put aside their differences to improve patient care. To get the critical care committee functioning effectively, the hospital’s medical director reached out to other physicians, persuading them to collaborate as a group to write a letter to all physicians regarding throughput issues. These throughput issues, namely delays in the transfer of patients from the emergency department to the critical care unit, put patient safety at risk. The medical director, through a collaborative style that took physician and hospital interests into consideration, negotiated an action plan that led to the development of admission and discharge criteria. Getting physicians to work together on this one issue paved the road for a successful critical care committee.
 
Having a physician leader who can bring physicians together for a common cause is the key to conducting meaningful meetings, but participation from physicians is a must. A lot of my work has focused on making the most out of committee meetings and tap into physicians’ talent and creativity. By building a meeting agenda that is dynamic and addresses the issues that doctors deal with every day turns a meeting into a conversation. 

I have developed a formula for making the most out of committee meetings over the years using a process of trial and error. Thus, below is a list of errors you should avoid making. For any meeting that includes physicians, the chair shalt not:

• Waste time on unnecessary and uninteresting agenda items. If an item does not require physicians’ attention, the committee should make a decision and take the item off-line.
• Force physicians to wade through pages of data reports. Instead, write an executive summary highlighting major changes. If an item requires action from the group, make it an agenda item. If it is an FYI, mention it briefly during the meeting and move on. Core measures, as well as other overall performance reports should only be reported quarterly.
• Present physicians with an ocean of text. Learn how to use eye-friendly graphics to communicate data points clearly.
• Rigorously follow up all unfinished business from the last meeting if it has low priority. Try to do as much work off-line to avoid trudging through details of no interest to physicians.
• Compulsively stick to the agenda, even if participants begin to discuss significant issues that should have been on the agenda. 
• Delegate agenda development to a support staff member without reviewing it or getting input from other important stakeholders.
• Fill the agenda with nursing or ancillary department issues that do not directly affect physicians.
• Get lost in the implementation of a decision, especially when those responsible for implementation are not present.
• Do all the talking, make all the decisions, and neglect to listen to other physicians and hospital stakeholders.

The meeting chair’s responsibility is to turn the meeting into a dynamic, interesting conversation that considers the real issues and problems at hand. Reviewing items from a stale agenda simply because “We’ve always done it that way” will no longer work.  

Best regards,
Carlotta Rinke, MD, FACP, MBA
Assistant vice president of quality and patient safety
Alexian Brothers Medical Center