Tips for encouraging physician participation on the peer review committee

How do we convince physicians to take their turns serving on the peer review committee? Should we provide a monetary incentive? And if we cannot provide a monetary incentive, what other incentives could we offer?

Brock Bordelon, MD, medical director at MDReview: Honestly, I think that a monetary incentive is usually not needed. It comes from engendering the idea that we need to do this for our community, we need to do this for ourselves, we need to do this for our facility. And it really comes down to having a good working relationship with your medical staff. If you've got an engaged medical staff, asking them to participate in peer review is a whole lot easier. One of the things that I have learned in doing internal peer review at my facility, state medical board type peer review, and MDReview peer review is that I learn something every single time I look at a case. It's an educational thing for me, and I've become, I hope, a better physician—and I think that passing that message along, particularly from active members of the peer review committee to prospective members, is really powerful. Yeah, it's painful sometimes, and there are days where you just don't want to get up for that meeting at 6:30 in the morning. And it's oftentimes gut wrenching because you make decisions that affect somebody's livelihood at times, but it is extremely rewarding, and it's probably one of the most important things I've ever done. So, I think reminding physicians of how important it is, reminding them that really, we're simply trying to improve quality of care delivery in our facility, is very important and very helpful.