Active Staff

July 16, 2020

Posted on by hortyspringer

QUESTION:        Our newly elected Chief of Staff is currently a department chair at our hospital.  She really likes the department chair position and is good at it.  At the same time, she also wants to fulfill the will of the Active Staff members who elected her to serve as the Chief of Staff.  Can she serve both positions at the same time?

ANSWER:            Serving in two leadership roles in the same hospital is not technically a conflict of interest, so unless there is a provision in the medical staff bylaws stating that an individual cannot serve in both roles, there is likely no technical reason that she cannot serve in both positions.  That said, practically speaking, it may not be the best idea.  Department chairs often have significant duties in terms of performing mentoring efforts and collegial counseling sessions with members of their departments in addition to their obligations to reviewing applicants for appointment and reappointment as well as service on the MEC.  In large clinical departments, these responsibilities can be quite intensive.  The Chief of Staff will generally be intimately involved in the active management of the most significant medical staff issues.  Combine those two sets of responsibilities and it is a lot for one person to do, and to do well.  In our experience, when department chairs or division chiefs are elected to serve as either the Vice Chief of Staff or the Chief of Staff, they have typically resigned the department chair/division chief position that they previously held.

January 18, 2018

Posted on by hortyspringer


QUESTION:        Our Active Staff category requires members to take emergency call.  In many specialties, we struggle with finding physicians willing to take their fair share of call.  In orthopedics, however, we have a group based primarily at another hospital outside our system who own their own diagnostic facilities, to which they end up referring many patients from our ED for services we can provide.  A few patients have expressed concerns about why they were sent to another facility.  A few patients have reported that the orthopedic surgeon said the other facility was much better and newer, with no wait time.  What can we do?


ANSWER:            The purpose of the emergency call obligations connected to Active Staff appointment and privileges is to enable the hospital to comply with EMTALA and provide care to patients who come to the hospital’s ED, not to provide a source of referrals of patients to facilities owned by on-call specialists.  If a patient needs an X-ray, in order to evaluate and stabilize an emergency medical condition, the patient should not be sent elsewhere (unless the patient specifically so requests) because that could implicate EMTALA.  Follow-up care not needed to treat or stabilize the condition that brought the patient to the ED could be provided elsewhere, and patients can choose where to receive follow-up care.  However, on-call specialists should not be marketing their facilities by in essence disparaging the hospital’s services.  (Of course, if patients are choosing to receive tests and other services elsewhere, upgrading facilities and adding staff to minimize wait times is a good idea, if feasible.)  Some hospitals limit call in some specialties to physicians who are under contract (or employed).  The Board can determine how call will be handled in different specialties.  Call is a responsibility, not a right or a “privilege.”  (It should not be included on delineation forms as a privilege.)  So long as departments don’t vote (which could give rise to conspiracy allegations), the Board and MEC would be free to establish how the hospital will satisfy its EMTALA obligations.