Tip of the week: Get comfortable with change

Various economic and political factors are creating drastic changes to the healthcare environment. These changes have forced many hospitals to reconsider their relationships with medical staff members in an effort to achieve financial success. Today, physicians are not only serve as part of the work force, but they are also customers, business partners, and competitors. Below is a list of some of the medical staff models your organization may want to consider to effectively adapt to the changing healthcare climate:

• The traditional self-governed medical staff
• A self-governed medical staff with fewer, more committed members
• Physician employment
• Service line management
• Contracts
• Joint ventures
• Economic competition policies
• Pay-for-performance contracts
• Gainsharing
• Large group practice relationships
• Physician-hospital compact
• Intended practice plan
• Medical staff membership by invitation only
• Physician equity

Which model(s) will be reflected in your medical staff in the next five years and why? For each model likely to be reflected in your medical staff, what must you do to make it successful? What challenges will arise from having multiple models at one time? What must be done to make a mixed model work?

This weeks tip is adapted from The Medical Staff in Transition: Accountability, Competence, and Competition, a Greeley Company seminar, and part of the 11th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium held in Las Vegas Nevada in May, 2008. To learn about the 2009 symposium, click here.