MEC Update
Dear colleagues,
Our Medical Executive Committee met on Wed September 2, after taking a summer sabbatical and skipping the August meeting. A few items of interest:
ELECTION RESULTS:
The results were announced for the recent Medical Executive Committee Member at Large election. We truly suffered from an embarrassment of riches, with several excellent candidates, but only four positions on the ballot, and only two open positions. Of the four outstanding individuals selected by the nominating committee for the ballot, the results were as follows:
| Ann Weinacker | 217 |
| Lisa Shieh | 165 |
| Ami Laws | 155 |
| Amreen Husain | 134 |
Drs. Weinacker and Shieh were thus elected to three year terms as Members at Large. Many thanks and great appreciation to all of the candidates for their willingness to serve their fellow medical staff members and the medical center. Thanks also to those who voted – we had much better participation than in previous MAL elections.
The next election will be for three open positions and will occur within a year, so if you have an interest in nominating yourself or a colleague, watch for the announcements.
QUALITY UPDATE:
As you may be aware, our recent patient satisfaction reports have not been as stellar as we would like. A great deal of effort has been put into this over the past several months, spearheaded by VP Sri Seshadri, and it is beginning to bear fruit, with new data revealing improvements in patient satisfaction with their experience in the clinics and ED.
I’m happy to report that we also have seen a significant decrease in medication errors. This improvement is attributed largely to the med pass time out program, so please continue to cooperate by not disturbing the RN’s while they are passing meds (indicated by light on COW).
COST and CLINICAL EFFECTIVENESS:
While we are very please to have seen much-needed improvements in many quality measures over the past couple years, there is one metric where we actually have consistently excelled for some time and where we are continuing to maintain our pre-eminence. Unfortunately, that metric is cost per admission. For any given DRG, we tend to spend more for each hospitalization than the vast majority of comparable University Health Consortium institutions.
There are multiple reasons for that, some known and some undoubtedly yet to be uncovered, but this is obviously a very big deal. It’s an area where we absolutely must improve, and it will be a high priority issue for some time. Look for this to be addressed as one aspect of the Clinical Effectiveness initiative, which as mentioned in the last MEC Update, will require a great deal of collaboration between hospital administration (CMO Kevin Tabb will be leading this effort) and the medical staff.
PEER REVIEW:
Although the peer review activities of our various medical staff committees must remain confidential, it bears reminding that in addition to engaging with systemic quality issues, one of the primary roles of our medical staff organization is to monitor the quality of medical care provided by our individual members and to take corrective action when deemed necessary. It’s critical that we act fairly in these matters, ensuring that our patients are protected from substandard care but also taking care to be impartial and fair to the physicians involved. That’s just one reason why it’s important that we maintain a vital and independent medical staff organization.
As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or suggestions.
Best,
Bryan Bohman, M.D.
Chief of Staff
bbohman@stanfordmed.org.
