When developing an aging physician policy, consider a fitness to work evaluation in which physicians must undergo a physical and mental examination once they reach a certain age (as defined in your policy). This free resource is a sample screening tool that the physician conducting the fitness...
Collaboration within and beyond the hospital is key to a robust OPPE process. MaineGeneral Medical Center, part of MaineGeneral Health system in the Augusta area, has taken this philosophy to heart. The hospital initiated OPPE and FPPE in 2009, but had a similar physician quality assessment...
This week’s free resource is a sample bureaucracy index report from The Medical Staff Leader’s Survival Guide. The report is designed to give a snapshot to your medical staff of the actual...
The managed care organization's (MCO) reimbursement policy and rates are a major factor when deciding whether to sign a contract to participate in its provider network. One of your duties may be to create a fee schedule comparison by setting up a spreadsheet that lists the top or most common CPT...
Practitioners’ scopes of practice are primarily established by the state, rather than the federal, government. Hospitals then determine allowed practice parameters within state boundaries. In other words, if a state has expanded the scope of an advanced practice professional’s (APP) practice,...
There is good protection for physicians who engage in peer review activities, such as legal immunity from damages under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986, which is often reinforced by similar state statutes. However, these statutes cannot keep lawsuits from being filed. Therefore,...
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...
Peer review ensures that a hospital assesses the performance of individuals granted clinical privileges via the activities of its medical staff, and uses the results of such assessments to improve care. This free resource is a sample form for documenting OPPE results from ...
Your clinical privilege forms need to be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they reflect up-to-date criteria requirements and standards for the procedure or specialty in question. For example, a procedure that used to be considered a special, noncore privilege when you developed your forms...
One way to encourage physician proctoring is to make it a medical staff expectation—either informally through your culture or formally through your medical staff governance documents. At St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, California, the medical staff rules and regulations and bylaws make...