Blogger and primary care physician "Dr. Rob" writes about being the boss of a medical practice. In this post, he offers tips on how to keep a practice financially successful while keeping staff happy.
The U.S. could face a shortage of up to 44,000 family physicians and general internists by 2025, according to a University of Missouri study. The trend is due to a skewed compensation system that rewards specialists increasingly more than primary care practitioners, researchers said. They were more optimistic about the future supply of general pediatricians, however.
After going above and beyond to help a patient who suffered a complication from dental work, Jim Eichel, MD, was almost named in a lawsuit against the dentist, despite the objections from the patient. Although the patient ultimately decided to not go through with the suit, this article speaks volumes about the malpractice climate and the toll the process takes on physicians.
A six-year study of the Toyota Motor Corporation has found that its Production System allows the company to continue improving the way it manufactures vehicles. However, researchers from Harvard Business Review also found that this innovative system does not solely account for Toyota's success. They believe the company is successful because it creates contradictions and paradoxes in many aspects of organizational life.
According to a June 11 announcement by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, doctors will have to reconcile their National Provider Identifiers data with their IRS legal name data in order to get paid. Every aspect of the data must match, including the exact spelling of names, the use of initials and even blank spaces in the data. The slightest discrepancy could send Medicare claims back to the drawing board, say billing experts.
Sixteen percent of infection control practitioners say they don’t have the support they need from clinical and administrative leaders to introduce additional MRSA prevention programs at their facilities, and 14% say they aren’t given the resources to fight the hospital acquired infection.
Healthcare leaders, what are you waiting for?
Controlling MRSA is not only an issue of patient safety, but come October, it will be an issue of your hospital’s financial well being. CMS, state Medicare programs, and some private payers have already said they’re not going to cough up the funds to pay for hospital acquired infections after October. MRSA is one of them, and if patients acquire it while at your hospital, the cost of eradicating the infection will now fall on your shoulders.
Yet, in a report released by the Association for Professionals and Infection Control & Epidemiology last week, 54% of ICPs surveyed say their hospitals aren’t doing everything they can to prevent the spread of MRSA. When asked what their hospitals should be doing to strengthen infection control, most respondents said hire more staff and adopt better technology to monitor the presence of infection in patients.
Now, not every hospital has the funds to hire more staff members and purchase new technology, but every hospital has a leader, and if that leader is a champion for an infection-free hospital, his or her employees will be as well. While more staff and better technology may be desirable, a powerful, respected leader can do more.
Marcia Patrick, RN, MSN, infection control director at MultiCare Health System in Tacoma, WA, says the support she gets from her CEO is critical to the organization’s infection control success. The CEO keeps herself informed about what’s going on on the hospital floors and makes sure employees know this, too.
“Any unit, on a monthly basis, that does not meet our 90% hand hygiene goal gets a call from the CEO asking them to explain why their hand hygiene is below 90%,” Patrick says.
No one wants to get that call from the CEO, she says, and the possibility is enough to spur employees at all levels to make improvements. Even with the organization’s success, its employees continue to work on ways to eliminate the spread of MRSA. “It has to come from the bottom up and the top down,” she says. “Not one or the other.”
Leaders’ involvement in quality improvement efforts is a topic that I’ve covered quite a bit over the last few months, and it’s a topic that should be of high concern to leaders across the country as CMS’ reimbursement policies change this fall. But the APIC’s study results show that we’ve got a ways to go yet. Is a culture of infection control running through your hospital’s veins? If not, what are you, as a quality leader, going to do about it?
Maureen Larkin is quality editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at mlarkin@healthleadersmedia.com.
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