Medical Staff

Meeting minute best practices that protect your organization during litigation

Medical Staff Briefing, January 1, 2010

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Keep minutes short and sweet. Focus on the actions taken during the meeting, rather than the discussion that led to the decision, suggests Halina J. Henning, CPMSM, CPCS, senior manager of medical staff administration at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

“It boils down to what decisions the committee makes. This is what needs to be memorialized, not necessarily who said what and why,” Henning says.

If you want to document that a particular issue engulfed the committee in rigorous debate, you can do so by stating in the minutes that a motion was made and seconded with one opposed, and it was passed with one abstaining, for example.

“The motion gets the message across that there was not a unanimous decision,” says Henning. “To indicate disagreement, I might say there was a ‘spirited’ or ‘robust’ discussion. The physician is not identified unless she or he specifically requests that it be ‘on the record.’”

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Medical Staff Briefing.

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