If you are looking to make a change at your hospital to define or revise the way you do or should be doing things, be sure you understand whether the change should be made in policy, procedure, or guideline, or to what extent in each. Policies are broad expressions of the intent or desired outcome… [Read More]
Mock Surveys: Helpful, or Not So Much…?
There are two types of recommendations that can come out of a mock survey: good recommendations and unhelpful recommendations. If you’ve had a mock survey before, it may have been delivered with recommendations like: “Staff should be educated…,” “Be sure to remind the physicians…,” or “Don’t do this anymore!” Two of these are “managed loose”… [Read More]
Areas of Focus: Enhanced Joint Commission Survey Process
If your hospital is accredited by The Joint Commission (TJC), your CEO recently received a letter. That letter alerts the CEO that Joint Commission surveyors have been given additional training in four subjects to focus on when they arrive at your door for a survey. These subjects are: high-level disinfection and sterilization; sterile compounding of… [Read More]
Pain Points in the Opioid Epidemic… for Hospitals and Physician Practices
No more Mr. Niceguy. It started as “better guidance” for prescribers as concerns mounted that the over-prescription of opioid pain medications was feeding a sharp rise in addiction to illicit forms, including street-sourced pills and heroin. But it has turned into well-coordinated federal and state enforcement actions against physicians and nurses, as well as their… [Read More]
Marijuana in the Hospital Environment
As more states legalize marijuana, more physicians have begun recommending cannabis to their patients for the management of pain, nausea, anxiety, and loss of appetite. Recent literature also suggests that cannabis may be effective in treating other conditions. For example, the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a drug whose active ingredient is… [Read More]
Still “laundry list” privileging? Let’s talk about OPPE and FPPE.
If you are still using “laundry list” privileging as opposed to core privileging, you are likely struggling to perform meaningful OPPE and FPPE. If a laundry list for a typical specialist includes 60-80 privileges, how do you determine current competence for each? In order to prove current competence, you need data. And performance on only… [Read More]
7 Common Hospital Conflicts + 1 Proven Conflict Resolution Tool = WAY Less Conflict
Hospitals and medical staffs all too often experience predictable areas of strife for which external peer review can prove to be a useful conflict resolution tool. We’ll bet you have at least three of these going on right now. You are not alone. Trust Issues When competing physician groups in the same specialty must conduct peer review… [Read More]
Does Your Medical Staff Services Department “Flex Up” to Meet Demand?
A hospital “flexes” its staff up and down all the time to meet the clinical needs of the census. Do you make similar staffing adjustments at reappointment time, or when a large volume of newly employed practitioners is onboarded? Interim medical staff professionals (MSPs) — individuals and teams — can help you optimize workloads, reduce… [Read More]
What Medical Directors Need to Succeed: Is Empowerment Enough?
Is your organization struggling with physician engagement — getting physicians on the organized medical staff on board with scheduling imperatives, quality and cost initiatives, and management expectations? Maybe your organization has added a layer of medical directors who report to the administration and are meant to support physician leadership? While there are many ways medical… [Read More]
The Best of Both Worlds: Honor Your Organization by NOT Choosing an Internal Interim CMO
Every organization has struggled at one point or another to fill this key and complex role. It takes time to find a great Chief Medical Officer. So what happens in the meantime? An Interim CMO? Many organizations opt to appoint an internal interim, but it’s often a lose-lose scenario. [HINT: Yes, we have an alternative solution. … [Read More]
