Tip of the week: Don't be afraid to use external review when appropriate

Hospitals should have a policy that clearly describes the circumstances under which it would seek the assistance of an external peer review organization. Some examples of when hospitals should use external reviews include (but are not limited to) the following:

• When current medical staff members do not have expertise in the specialty under review
• When the only practitioners on the medical staff with expertise to review the specialty are associates, partners, or direct competitors of the practitioner under review
• When current medical staff members do not have the appropriate training or experience with new equipment or techniques

Most hospitals adopt policies that allow the MEC and governing board to use external peer review whenever deemed appropriate. For example, the medical staff may need an expert witness for a fair hearing, to evaluate a practitioner's credentials file, or to develop benchmarks for quality monitoring.

The preceding information was excerpted from The Essential Guide to Medical Staff Reappointment: Tools to Create and Maintain an Ongoing, Criteria-Based Process, Second Edition, by Anne Roberts, CPMSM, CPCS. To learn more, click here.