Allies or Adversaries: Revitalizing the Medical Staff Organization [Paperback]

Craig E. Holm (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1567932231 | ISBN-13: 978-1567932232 | Publication Date: July 2004 | Edition: 1

The primary focus of this book is to explore strategies that will help hospitals reshape their relationships with medical staff organizations, making the medical staff organization and its physicians a vital and involved component of the hospital. Not only will a revitalized medical staff organization help hospitals meet the needs of its physicians, but it will also help hospitals compete more effectively in the marketplace, better serve community needs, and use community resources more wisely. This book provides characteristics and functions of the future medical staff, suggested incentives for physicians, competitive strategies for both physicians and hospitals, and techniques for building mutually beneficial relationships with medical staff organizations. This book lays out a framework that healthcare leaders can adapt to their organizations. The author provides a step-by-step methodology for determining physician need, implementation strategies, and numerous suggestions to encourage active participation from medical staff organizations.

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About the Author

Craig Holm, CHE, is a director of Health Strategies & Solutions, Inc., a leading independent healthcare management consulting firm based in Philadelphia. Mr. Holm's practice focuses on strategy development for physicians, hospitals, and health systems. He has been a management consultant since 1989. He previously served as a hospital administrator at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, New York, and at Clifton Springs Hospital in Clifton Springs, New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

The title for this book, Allies or Adversaries: Revitalizing the Medical Staff Organization, was not selected until after the book had been written. When my publisher suggested it as an alternative to the original working title The Medical Staff of the Future, I was sold. As we look to the future, hospitals, systems, and physicians have a fundamental critical choice: Will they be allies or adversaries? And if they choose to be allies, what vehicle or forum will be used to ensure that collaboration truly occurs? I believe our best opportunities for collaboration lie with medical staff organizations rather than newly created, independent organizations.

Without a doubt, medical staff organizations have been allowed to languish into near uselessness in many hospitals and systems, often existing merely as a credentialing and accrediting body or as a reason to meet the committee and meeting requirements of accreditation and licensure organizations. In few situations have physicians earned or been granted substantive input into the management and direction of hospitals and systems through the medical staff organization or by any other means.

But the medical staff structure has enormous potential. It provides a forum for quality-of-care issues and clinical care questions and concerns. Medical staff department meetings and full medical staff organization meetings provide a periodic forum for physicians to interact with their colleagues and for hospital leaders to gain insight into physician concerns and initiate resolution.

We are truly at a crossroads for physician-hospital relationships. The dust is settling after the failed efforts in the late 1980s and 1990s to integrate, or some might say bind, physicians to hospitals and systems. Physicians have responded by pursuing initiatives that place them in direct competition with hospitals. Add to this the fact that many physicians work exclusively in the office or outpatient setting, sometimes with the help of hospitalists, and require little, if any, contact or interaction with an acute-care facility. It is overwhelmingly apparent that many physicians no longer want or need to participate in a medical staff organization. That said, some evidence indicates that significant collaboration is occurring between medical staffs and hospitals and systems through the formation of economic joint ventures, affiliated physician groups (sometimes in employment relationships or other relationships; these are discussed more fully in Chapter 4), and other creative arrangements.

The burden will be on the shoulders of hospital and system leaders to create a medical staff organization that will help them compete more effectively in a market in which competition with traditional acute-care providers shows no signs of abating. Hospital leaders must explore approaches for working collegially with physicians, regaining lost trust, and promoting active involvement in the medical staff organization. Patience, perseverance, a commitment of resources, and a willingness to truly listen to physician concerns and ideas will help ensure that medical staff organizations are revitalized into meaningful entities that help drive the success of hospitals and systems.

Physicians who choose to be allies with hospitals and systems should be rewarded with partnership opportunities that provide true value. When being allies is no longer an option, hospitals and systems must weigh the risks and rewards of pursuing competitive strategies in partnership with aligned physicians to thwart physician initiatives that threaten hospitals’ market position, financial performance, and ability to be a full-service community resource.

The stakes are high. The ability of hospitals and systems to provide quality healthcare services in partnership with private practice, community-based physicians is in jeopardy. Will everyone pick a different corner of the ring and come out fighting, wasting community resources in their battle for survival and a share of the shrinking healthcare expenditure pie? Or will reason prevail and opportunities be seized so that patients, physicians, and hospitals are all winners? The choice is yours. Hopefully, this book will provide food for thought as more meaningful and constructive relationships between hospitals and staff physicians are debated and implemented.

Product Details

• Paperback: 117 pages
• Publisher: Health Administration Pr; 1 edition (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1567932231
• ISBN-13: 978-1567932232
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,369,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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