The Seven Deadly Sins for medical staff professionals
Last week, I wrote about the "Seven Deadly Sins" for medical staff leaders. I received a number of comments on the column and was asked to provide the following as related to medical staff professionals. This is an excerpt from the book that Peggy Greeley and I wrote called Professional Excellence = Professional Advancement: 101 Smart Things Every Medical Staff Services Professional Should Do.
Again, this is purely from our point of view. We spent a lot of time discussing what we called "career limiting moves" that we have seen medical staff professionals commit during the many years that we have been involved with this profession, and we narrowed it down to the following list:
- Placing the medical staff in the middle of a dispute between you and hospital administration.
This is never a good idea. If you believe that you deserve a raise or that you need additional staff, deal directly with the person to whom you report rather than going to a medical staff leader and asking him/her to support your cause.
- Establishing unnecessary bureaucracy in the medical staff office.
Don't add pointless policies, procedures, etc. to the medical staff office. Pointless policies and procedures would include things that don't contribute to improved quality or increased operational effectiveness. An example of unnecessary bureaucracy is when physicians are required to submit copies of documents during the credentialing process (for example, a copy of their board certification), when the information will be verified from the primary source.
- Falsifying medical staff records (i.e., information in credentials files, minutes, etc.).
Medical staff professionals should never be involved in any type of forgery or misrepresentation of medical staff organization records. This includes writing minutes for meetings that never occurred, falsifying dates on documents to coincide with dates when something should have happened (but didn't) and other assorted fabrications.
- Getting behind in credentialing (or other critical work) and hiding it from your supervisor.
Hiding unprocessed new appointments under a desk will not solve the problem, and will only make you unable to sleep at night. The consequences of concealing work that hasn't been completed (or even started) is far greater if it is discovered by your supervisor, than if you go to your supervisor and come up with a plan for catching up.
- Knowing that regulatory/accreditation requirements are out of compliance and not telling anyone (if it is something beyond your control) or correcting it (if it is within your control).
If you know that something is supposed to happen and it isn't, you need to raise the flag. If bylaws, policies, procedures, etc. are not being followed, it is your responsibility to share that information with the medical staff organization (perhaps via the credentials committee or medical executive committee). If your organization gets "caught" for failure to meet accreditation or licensing requirements, the natural tendency (unfortunately) is to look for someone to blame. You will be an easy target if you knew and remained silent.
- Divulging confidential information.
If you are caught revealing confidential information about physicians (or patients), you will probably never regain the confidence and trust of the medical staff and administration.
- Perpetuating policies, procedures and other systems because "it has always been done that way before."
Medical staff services departments are in a tremendous transition as many departments are in the process of moving to paperless credentialing and looking for other ways that technology can help them operate more efficiently. Don't be the one to always throw up a barrier for why things can't change. They can. If you are perceived as the barrier to productive change, that can certainly be a career-limiting (or career-ending) move.
Until next week,
Vicki L. Searcy, CPMSM
Practice Director, Credentialing & Privileging
The Greeley Company
vsearcy@greeley.com
www.greeley.com