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How to achieve medical staff collaboration

Hospitalist Leadership Connection, October 26, 2010

Collaboration between in-house and outside hospital physicians doesn’t just happen; it must be planned. Traditional venues for communication such as informal meetings in the medical staff lounge and medical executive committee (MEC) meetings don’t seem as relevant today because more physicians remain outside of the hospital in their busy practices and don’t seem interested in participating in voluntary medical staff leadership functions. It is important for members of the governing board, senior management team, and medical staff leadership to have access to information of the rank-and-file membership of the medical staff and, in turn, for those members to have input in the strategic planning process at the highest levels. It is no longer enough for board members to hear from voting physician members of the board what the medical staff perspective is because it may not accurately reflect the increasingly diverse, divergent points of view between hospital, nonhospital, employed, and self-employed practitioners. A strategic plan based on the wants and needs of employed or contracted hospital-based physicians is a limited perspective on which to base strategic decisions involving the organized medical staff as a whole.

Consider the following venues as settings for potential collaboration:

• The MEC, which often includes formal leaders and department chairs on the medical staff
• A joint conference committee made up of MEC and board leaders
• A physician council made up of committed, influential formal and informal medical staff leaders to advise senior management on an ongoing basis
• A cabinet to advise senior management on specific issues requiring clinical, political, and economic insight
• A medical advisory council to focus on strategic issues of importance through an  interdisciplinary problem-solving approach
• Strategic medical staff development planning subcommittee of the board to discuss the growth and development of the medical staff on a clinical-service by clinical-service basis
• A service line operational council to discuss key clinical and operational issues through a collaborative governance and leadership process with members of the medical staff and management
• A leadership and succession planning committee, often made up of past presidents of the medical staff who identify potential leaders, and train, develop, support, and retain them
• A succession planning subcommittee of the board to identify, train, and develop future board and senior management leaders
• Interdisciplinary clinical service committees to facilitate discussion and planning between related clinical services (e.g., pediatrics, perinatology, obstetrics and gynecology)

Strategic planning needs to incorporate ways that information, knowledge, and intelligence percolate up through an organization to the board so that strategic planning decisions reflect the needs.

The above excerpt is adapted from the new book, Engage and Align the Medical Staff and Hospital Management: Expert Strategies and Field-Tested Tools, by Jonathan H. Burroughs, MD, MBA, FACPE, CMSL; Robert J. Marder, MD, CMSL; and Mary J. Hoppa, MD, MBA, CMSL published by HCPro, Inc.

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