The Court of Appeals for the Fifth District of Texas (the "Court") granted a petition for writ of mandamus, requiring the trial court to vacate its order requiring a hospital to produce documents it contended were protected from discovery by the Texas medical peer review committee and medical...
Prospective proctoring is a powerful and greatly underutilized tool. The approach involves a one-on-one discussion with the practitioner of concern to learn how he or she will tackle a specific patient care problem and to understand his or her clinical thinking. It is a vehicle for previewing...
Since the days of Semmelweis and Nightingale, patient outcomes have been measured and evaluated. When The Joint Commission introduced focused professional practice evaluation (FPPE) in 2007, it formally prescribed that healthcare organizations must perform a targeted assessment of practitioners...
Identifying red flags within credentialing applications can be the first step to protecting yourself and your facility from a successful plaintiff litigation. In Negligent Credentialing: Best Practices to Prevent Successful Plaintiff Litigation, expert Mark A....
About a year ago, I ran into a well-known physician quality leader at a national meeting. As we discussed various aspects of physician performance evaluation, he made a somewhat broad statement that sounded reasonable but felt unsettling. His view was that, since healthcare quality was really...
Practitioner competency is increasingly in the spotlight for patients, insurers, regulators, and others. Thus, documenting and ensuring competency is an increasing part of your job. CMS’ CoPs state that an organized medical staff must have a process in place for determining the...
