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• The role of leaders to mitigate conflict and protect patients

   

  

  This weekly column from The Greeley Company addresses current issues in peer review, bylaws and governance, credentialing and privileging, physician leadership, and other important medical staff related topics.

  In 2009, The Joint Commission came out with a new leadership standard LD.02.04.01 (“The hospital manages conflict between leadership groups to protect the quality and safety of care”). This standard mandates the early identification and resolution of conflict in healthcare organizations. In addition, effective March 31, 2011, the new MS.01.01.01 standard mandates that the organized medical staff develop a process to manage conflict between the medical staff and the medical executive committee. These conflicts include but are not limited to proposals to adopt a rule, regulation, policy, or an amendment thereto (EP 10). Why is conflict such an accreditation concern and what is its role in potentially undermining patient safety?

  Many of you will recall the tragedy involving the Continental Express commuter plane that occurred near Buffalo, NY last year. Many thought that the plane crashed because of ice on the wings or poor visibility. In truth, the black box that was recovered determined that instead of focusing on the landing as required under the FAA “sterile cockpit” rules, the pilots were in a heated discussion about their poor working conditions and pay. During this discussion, warning lights indicated that the plane was flying dangerously slow and was at risk of losing loft. Instead of lowering the nose of the aircraft to increase its airspeed, the pilot raised the nose causing the plane to “stall out.” Subsequently, 50 lives were lost. 

  Read more of this column by Jon Burroughs, MD, MBA, FACPE, CMSL, senior consultant with The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc. in Marblehead, MA.

• Tip of the week: Take a proactive approach to low-volume providers

  Regardless of their reasons for not being active at the hospital, many low-volume practitioners want to maintain medical staff membership because their managed care plans require them to be affiliated with a hospital.  Although the National Committee for Quality Assurance no longer requires this, many managed care plans still do, says Christina Giles, CPMSM, MS, president of Medical Staff Solutions, a consulting firm in Nashua, NH.
   

• Featured blog post: Tips for preparing the medical staff for regulatory surveys

  With the Joint Commission performing unannounced accreditation surveys, organizations must be in a state of continuous readiness. In addition, in recent years, Joint Commission surveyors have focused on the participation of the medical staff during a survey. Below are some tips for medical staff leaders to help them prepare their medical staffs for upcoming surveys.

• Six tips for measuring hospitalist program performance

  Hospitalist programs must measure their performance regularly to gauge whether they are making any progress toward their improvement initiatives. 

• Develop and support physician leaders

  Organizations must recognize that physicians aren’t taught leadership skills in medical school. Thus, organizations must develop a curriculum and one or more vehicles for delivering this curriculum to current and developing leaders.

• Hospitalists unaware of inpatient costs, study says

  Although hospitalists have been known to cut hospital costs, a new study finds that hospitalists are unaware of the actual costs of care to inpatients, according to “Hospitalists’ awareness of patient charges associated with inpatient care,” published in the June issue of the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

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