The medical staff services department doesn’t assess practitioners’ competence, but MSPs can ensure that the organized medical staff has the bylaws, policies, and procedures in place to conduct a consistent, fair, effective, and well-documented peer review process. In addition, MSPs can be instrumental in ensuring that the medical staff leadership and chairs are following established processes for peer review and that no conflicts of interest occur.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. is expected to experience a physician shortage of between 42,600 and 121,300 physicians by the end of the next decade. This shortage will be due in part to increasing demand for medical care from a large aging population as well as high numbers of physicians approaching retirement. Rural areas are already experiencing difficulty; they accounted for 60% of the more than 7,200 areas identified as lacking adequate healthcare and resources.

What is the best way to deal with disruptive behavior? Conduct the initial intervention when medical staff leadership has decided to proceed beyond just providing routine feedback. If you feel that the physician will refute the accusations, come armed with data. If the physician tends to get volatile in these situations and shouts, counter by talking quietly (enforcing the idea that you are not fazed by the physician’s yelling) or respond in a forceful way without shouting to show that you are not intimidated. If the physician threatens to leave and call his or her attorney, it is best to fall back on a mandatory appearance policy, which is a policy that states that in these situations, if a physician leaves before the conclusion of the meeting, he or she will automatically undergo temporary suspension of privileges until the meeting is held to its completion, without an attorney. Download our sample mandatory appearance policy.

Understand the circumstances under which the peer review committee typically recommends external peer review to the medical executive committee (MEC).

HCPro is currently seeking speakers to present at the 2020 Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, to be held April 20-21 in New Orleans. We seek speakers to present on all aspects of credentialing, privileging, and medical staff functions across any healthcare setting. Please click this link to apply: https://app.keysurvey.com/f/1418095/8b5b/

Find out what’s happening in the world of federal healthcare regulations by reviewing some recent headlines from across the country.

The AMA is calling for barriers “based on arbitrary thresholds” to be lifted for prescription opioids. The organization says that these barriers, which were put into place in response to the opioid crisis, have hurt many patients receiving medication-assisted treatment (MAT).

CRC members can peruse all of the online articles from the August 2019 issues of CRCJ and MSB—as well as full-color PDFs—here:

• CRCJ
• MSB

To access the relevant full-issue PDF, select "DOWNLOAD FULL ISSUE" at the top of the page.