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Why the hospital-physician staffing structure must change: create incentives? Employ docs? Put quality measures in contracts? Everything is on the table, panelists say.

Article Excerpt
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The doctor's lounge is empty. A large orthopedist group won't contract with your organization if there are on-call requirements. You need physicians to staff a major performance improvement initiative but no one steps forward to volunteer.

You could call it the case of the disappearing doctor, and it is playing out in hospitals across the country.

Hospital-physician relationships are often strained, but the troubled economy coupled with outmoded payment arrangements and medical staff structures--and with medical staff participation in hospital quality initiatives at an all-time low--the need for alignment in financial, strategic and operational performance has never been greater.

"The misalignment of hospital incentives versus physician incentives is dear," said Matthew Lambert, M.D., senior vice president for clinical operations at Elmhurst (Ill.) Memorial Healthcare.

Health Forum convened a panel of Chicago-area physician executives March 30 to explore how hospitals and doctors can collaborate to drive quality, safety and performance improvement. This article was taken from that discussion. For the complete roundtable discussion, go to www.hnmag.com and click on CMO Dialogue.

"Physicians are being asked to do more while being paid less," said Kevin Most,...

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