Supporting Safer Healthcare

The Happy Hospitalist is not so happy at the moment. What has stirred up Dr. Happy’s inner curmudgeon?  Physician Credentialing. As my experience is on the other side of that particular desk, I’ve excerpted a few portions of his recent post on the topic, and added some commentary below. “For physicians to do a hospital admission [...]

Job postings reveal a considerable amount about how a position is viewed and understood in an organization.  From time to time I look at postings in the Medical / Professional Staff Services field, just to see what those writing the job ads consider essential skills for the positions.  The results can be as different as night and day.  Granted, the role may [...]

Horty Springer offers up an interesting question this week: Question: We recently learned that one of our physicians had several of his cases reviewed by an outside consultant at the hospital across town because of quality of care concerns. When we asked him to authorize the other hospital to provide us with copies of the [...]

The Joint Commission has released their 2010 Pre-Publication Standards for all accreditation programs.  The Hospital Standards (290 pages) feature an expanded Leadership chapter with a focus on patient safety.  For example, LD.04.04.05 (page 90), which includes 14 Elements of Performance, states "The hospital has an organization-wide, integrated patient safety program within its performance improvement activities." EP [...]