Needed: A Webcast on Disruptive and Criminal Hospital Executives

I received this, unsolicited, via email:

Webcast:  Managing Disruptive Docs in a New Era of Hospital-Physician Relations

If you haven't already purchased this live Webcast, don't miss out! Left unchecked, disruptive physicians do more than just create a negative work environment; they endanger patient care and can lead to million-dollar lawsuits and bad publicity.  Our top experts will show you early intervention techniques and a range of effective resources that can help you reduce behavioral problems, retain star physicians, create a healthier workplace and save millions in potential lawsuits.

The agenda includes:

    Defining and identifying causes of disruptive behavior
    Economic consequences of disruptive behavior
    Overcoming disruptive physician problems

This program will be guided by your questions, so register now and ask away!

Your instructors:

Alan Rosenstein, MD, MBA
Medical Director of Physician Wellness Services

David Danielson, JD, CPA
Senior Vice President, Clinical Risk Management, Sanford Health

Scott Hurst
Former Director of Physician Alignment and Recruitment, CHRISTUS Spohn Health System

Managing Disruptive Docs in a New Era of Hospital-Physician Relations is designed to help CEOs, COOs, CMOs, group practice administrators, HR leaders, and physicians learn strategies and tactics to prevent, reduce, and limit the severity of disruptive physician incidents.

"Disruptive physician" is a vague term subject to enormous abuse, leading to sham peer review among other totalitarian tactics.   It reminds me of the old Soviet Union's politics.

You have been deemed a Disruptive Physician, Comrade.  You will be given a fair trial, then shot

In particular, this label can be used to suppress clinician concerns about care quality in an era of cost cutting and care manipulation through electronic workflow control systems (e.g., EHR's CPOE, CDS etc.)

The potential of being labelled as "disruptive" may be one reason why physician outcry against the very low quality of healthcare IT systems and dangers posed by them is relatively uncommon.

Patients - you - ultimately suffer when your physicians fear being your outspoken advocates.

As the many stories of healthcare executive malfeasance and profiteering at the expense of patients on this blog indicate, what is really needed for true healthcare reform are webcasts on:

MANAGING DISRUPTIVE AND CRIMINAL HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES IN AN ERA OF RAMPANT CORPORATIZATION OF MEDICINE.

-- SS

Addendum:  here are additional resources on the “Disruptive Physician”:

Abuse of the “Disruptive Physician” Clause, http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/huntoon.pdf

The Insulting Physician “Code of Conduct”, http://www.jpands.org/vol13no1/huntoon.pdf

In the latter article, Lawrence Huntoon MD PhD, and expert on abuses of this label, notes:

... The typical physician code of conduct is initiated by a hospital administration. Its wording is curiously similar from one hospital to the next, suggesting that a template is being circulated.

... The physician code of conduct is intentionally insulting, demeaning, and degrading to physicians, and reduces physicians to being treated like juvenile delinquents at a reform school. It assumes that all physicians, like juvenile delinquents, need to be subjected to a long list of prohibited behaviors because, in the hospital administration’s view, physicians are predisposed to such things as theft, destruction of property, and physical and sexual assault. Conspicuous by its absence is any mention of “disruptive” or “abusive” hospital administrators, or any similar code of conduct applicable to a hospital administration.

Dr. Huntoon then goes on to make a recommendation, a "hospital administration’s code of conduct":

... The term “disruptive hospital administrator” and/or “abusive hospital administrator” should be incorporated into the hospital administration’s code of conduct and should be defined as anyone in the hospital administration who, in the view of the medical staff (as determined by majority vote), interferes with the ability of physicians to provide safe and high-quality care to patients in the hospital.

His detailed criteria for “disruptive hospital administrator” in the latter article are worth reading in their entirety.

-- SS