"I think all organizations should be looking at a texting platform. Because you’re not going to stop folks from doing it. If you have somebody with their own phone and they text someone else, you can’t police it because you’re not monitoring that phone. So, what’s a good way to address that? It’s to provide a tool that’s easy to use that they can make sure what they’re sending is secure."

Medical staff categories reflect the type and/or level of practice/activity that a hospital’s or healthcare system’s medical staff members carry out within the facility (e.g., based on the kind/number of admissions, patient contacts, or consultations) and help define their roles in medical staff governance. The organized medical staff has long defined such categories for its board-approved, MD degree–holding medical staff members.

Results from a national survey of pediatric care providers recently published in Clinical Pediatrics highlight the increasing burden of documentation and the need to include coding and billing skills as part of the medical curriculum.

Experts agree that locum tenens should not have their own medical staff category. “Membership on the medical staff typically denotes an association with a special prerogative, such as the right to vote or hold office,” says Sally Pelletier, CPMSM, CPCS, advisory consultant and chief credentialing officer for The Greeley Company in Danvers, Massachusetts. “Locums are filling a very specific clinical need and should be granted privileges, but not appointment to the medical staff.”

CRC members can peruse all the online articles from the October 2018 issues of CRCJ and MSB—as well as full-color, newly redesigned PDFs—here:

• CRCJ
• MSB

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

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

Join us for a peer review virtual workshop and get your current peer review challenges solved! During this 2.5-hour workshop, peer review experts Robert Marder, MD, and Marla Smith, MHSA, will provide attendees with solutions to peer review issues specific to their organization. Attendees will have the opportunity to anonymously share their organization’s peer review challenges by completing a brief questionnaire in advance of the program; Marder and Smith will use this questionnaire to help attendees develop solutions. Attendees will walk away not only with solutions to their own struggles, but also with insight into how other organizations have solved their pressing peer review issues. Marder and Smith will additionally present case studies on organizations who have successfully worked through bias, culture, or logistic issues regarding peer review. To see the agenda, or to register, click here.

Would you be interested in a book concerning how to process physicians who wish to reenter practice? Answer our latest poll question to let us know! Anything specific you'd like to see addressed in the book? Send your thoughts to Associate Editor Karla Accorto at kaccorto@hcpro.com.