HCPro.com: Credentialing and Peer Review Legal Insider

The Credentialing and Peer Review Legal Insider provides the latest 'how-to' techniques, and practical 'working tools' to help you credential and conduct peer review more easily and more effectively - while avoiding legal pitfalls!

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May 2008 (Volume 5, Issue 5)	view entire issue

Limit liability by implementing best practices for physician hearings
Hearings to terminate a physician's medical staff membership are unpleasant for everyone involved. The process is time-consuming and expensive, the situation may cause discord among the members of the medical staff-or between the medical staff and the hospital-and physician members of the hearing panel may resent the imposition on their time. The physician who is the subject of the hearing would almost certainly prefer not to have to defend his or her right to continued membership on the medical staff. For all these reasons, hospitals usually exert considerable effort to avoid hearings. Even so, sometimes there is no choice.

Bylaws or policies and procedures should accommodate physicians called to active duty
Given the extremely high cost of a medical education, it is not surprising that a significant number of physicians choose to join the military reserves in part to get assistance with medical school costs. Because many hospitals will likely face a situation whereby a medical staff member must leave for a tour of duty, it is wise to review your facility's bylaws and/or policies and procedures to ensure that the process in place is workable and fair, says Atlanta-based independent medical affairs consultant Teresa P. Sappington, CPMSM, CPCS, CPHQ, CAPPM. If the process at your facility is unnecessarily burdensome, consider revising it to make the physician's departure and reentry simpler.

Other recently-published articles from Credentialing and Peer Review Legal Insider:

Improve physician behavior using patient satisfaction data

Effective leadership training prevents lawsuits, ensures regulatory compliance

Ensure physicians know restrictions on standing orders

Sentinel Event Alert: Evaluate disruptive behavior policies

Ensure appropriate competency assessments for AHPs

Overcome barriers to the effective use of physician quality data

Avoid three pitfalls common to the core privileging method

Joint Commission suspends revised standard MS.1.20 implementation

Hospitals’ creative solutions ensure adequate ED coverage

Hospital management benefits from transparent, communicative culture

Bylaws or policies and procedures should accommodate physicians called to active duty

Limit liability by implementing best practices for physician hearings

Be prepared to scrutinize all privilege requests during reappointment process to comply with regulations

A graduated discipline policy can boost procedural compliance

Protect your facility while supporting practitioner recovery

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