Hospitals are using temporary or supplementary physicians more and more to help deal with a growing physician shortage. Is this a practice your hospital should be employing?

• Maryland Hospital Hotline Enhances Physician Satisfaction
• Benefits and Drawbacks of Hiring Locum Tenens
• Do Your Physician Recruitment Costs Measure up?
• Discuss locum tenens on the message board 
• Ask our expert a question on locum tenens  

One of the most important things any hospital can do to bring its physicians closer is to literally link everybody together with an electronic medical record (EMR), which simultaneously promotes quality, continuity, and efficiency. It is also one of the most difficult things to do.

• The Physician Preference Card
• Integration Principles: Lessons from St. Jude
• Discuss EHR on the message board 
• Ask our expert a question on EHR  

According to HFMA's Healthcare Financial Outlook 2009, 45 percent of CFOs believe it is highly or extremely likely that nearly all hospitals will employ a majority of their physicians in the next 10 years. But this does not mean the industry is planning to reprise its behavior in the 1990s. Among the chief differences between then and now is that the physicians are approaching hospitals, rather than the other way around.

• Employing Physicians: What’s in It for Them – and You?
• Physician On-Boarding: Post-Recruitment Assimilation
• Creating the Right Compensation Package for Physicians
• Discuss employee compensation on the message board
• Ask our expert a question on employee compensation  

Shrinking revenues and growing pressure from payers to coordinate hospital and physician services lend new urgency to controlling outpatient operating costs. Measuring and improving staff productivity are essential to accomplishing this. However, due to their complex and technical nature, productivity improvement programs can take a year or more of work by skilled consultants to implement in large group practices or outpatient clinics. In this case study, one 200-physician group put a productivity program in place in just two months, using an innovative “train the trainer” approach. The result was a rapid and significant improvement in staff productivity that helped restore the group to profitability.

• Improving the Performance of Your Physician Network
• Discuss boosting staff productivity on the message board 
• Ask our expert a question on boosting staff productivity  

Today, a growing number of hospitals are entering into co-management arrangements with groups of physicians, rather than individuals, to manage key service lines, typically top revenue generators like neurosurgery, cardiology, and orthopedics.

• Dragging Affiliated Practices into the Black
• Connecting the Dots Between New Physician Hires and Total Admissions
• Co-Management Program Example Measures
• Co-Management: Legal and Operational Components Slide Show
• Discuss co-management on the message board 

It’s always a good idea to keep close track of your hospital and/or system’s contractual relationships with its physicians, but the issue takes on fresh urgency in light of recent changes to the Physician Self-Referral Law, better known as Stark. Failure to comply with Stark can have devastating financial consequences for both the organization and its physicians.

• Period of Disallowance Examples
• Discuss physician contract compliance on the message board 

Given the high-profile nature of emergency departments, it's logical to assume that compensation strategies for ED physicians must reward quality, efficiency, and patient satisfaction above all, right? Not so much…

• How Much are Emergency Department Physicians Making?
• Supply Reform: Are You Ready to Engage Your Physicians? 
• Discuss emergency room compensation on the message board 

Communication is key in hospitals and that includes between a hospital and its physicians.  Learn some techniques to create engaging newsletters for physicians that will help you stay connected and help physicians stay informed.

• Physician Newsletters: By The Numbers
• Physician Satisfaction: Keeping Your Finger on the Pulse 
• Discuss physician newsletters on the message board 

As more hospitals and health systems come to understand the importance of forming a partnership with their physicians, more physician advisory groups are springing up. Read about the benefits of forming physician advisory councils.

• The Dynamic State of Physician-Hospital Alignment: Using Collaboration and Strategy to Drive Success  
• Assessing Physician Performance? Check out this criteria 
• Discuss physician councils on the message board  

Is your hospital satisfied with the job it’s doing in terms of quality oversight, patient safety, credentialing, privileging, and peer review? Perhaps it's time you hired a medical staff executive.

• Finessing Physician Naysayers 
• How Ready Is Your Hospital to Successfully Engage Its Physicians? 

Lower mortality, fewer complications, shorter length of stay: The benefits of using intensivists, or critical care specialists, in the ICU are beyond dispute. They don’t necessarily happen overnight, however.

• What – or Who -- Is an Intensivist? 
• How much does ICU cost?

• Develop strategies and tactics to manage physician revenue in your own hospital environment.
• Manage the differences between professional and technical revenue.
• Leverage a combined billing office for exceptional performance.