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Scheduling and manpower issues. Dealing with office staff concerns. Answering questions about the admissions policy or compliance and regulatory issues. Overseeing patient care and safety. Surveys and reviews. It’s all part of the job for those who serve as liaisons between hospitals and physicians.
Hospitals in Mississippi are joining a national trend of giving specific employees the task of dealing with staff physicians and any problems or questions they might have.

“I think it’s a trend. You’re going to see more and more hospitals developing this,” said Ron Cain, director of physician support services at Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg. “Every hospital is looking for ways to satisfy their staff and make it easier to practice there.”

Having a go-to person is a trend born from competition, according to an official with the American Medical Association.

“If the community hospitals are going to compete with specialty hospitals, they have to be more and more focused, and take care of the customer, and in this case, the physicians are the customers,” said Dr. Stephen House of Dayton, Ohio, chairman of the Organized Medical Staff section of the AMA.

Millie Swan, director of physician and public relations at Hattiesburg’s Forrest General Hospital, agrees.

“Physicians, just like the public, are our customers,” Swan said. “They are also our partners, and their input and participation is vital. They are the only people who can admit patients. They need a system in place to deal with concerns and provide quick response and follow-up. When a physician relations department is in place, physicians can make one call to gain assistance. Their time should not be spent tracking down the right person to address the concern. They have patients to see. It’s our job to do that for the physicians. We serve as a liaison to our medical staff and their offices, and we also serve as a contact for outlying physicians who may need information from Forrest General.”

Swan has been at Forrest General for 13 years.

“There was not a department when I arrived,” she said. “I set up the department at Forrest General and also at the King’s Daughters Hospital in Greenville prior to coming here.”

In the past, physician issues were often handled in a reactive manner, said Shawn Zehnder Lea, vice president for strategic communications with the Mississippi Hospital Association.

“The new trend in physician relations models is to establish a team that can be proactive in solving physician issues and recruiting new physicians,” Lea said. “Generally, if you are always reacting to physician issues, you’re always in crisis mode, but when you’re proactive, you can work towards solutions before they become crises.”

Sometimes, the hospital’s physician recruiter is the one who deals with physicians’ issues. Cain serves that purpose at Wesley Medical Center, as does Tess Shaw, the physician recruiter at Central Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, which has approximately 300 physicians on staff.

“While my primary role is to recruit physicians, I also serve as a physician liaison to our medical staff and their practices along with another person in our marketing department,” Shaw said. “Good physician relations is vital to retaining and building our patient referral base. The goal of our physician liaison program is to strengthen the hospital’s relationship with the physicians who utilize our facility. We recognize that the physician is our most important customer. Without the physician, we would not have the patients. And we don’t take these relationships for granted but recognize that these relationships must be cultivated and continually nurtured.”

Nurturing the relationship between the physician and hospital is a topic that comes up again and again in interviews with the liaisons, especially during a time when it’s getting harder to recruit physicians and specialists.

“For hospitals and physicians alike to survive in the current healthcare environment, i.e., reduced reimbursement, more and more regulatory requirements, skyrocketing utilities, etc., we will have to build lasting relationships to support and care for one another, our patient populations and the communities that we serve,” said Sharrie Entrekin, administrative director, Medical Staff Services, and president of Mississippi Association Medical Staff Services at Mississippi Baptist Health Systems in Jackson. Mississippi Baptist has approximately 500 physicians on staff, 250 on the staff of its Restorative Care Hospital and 13 physicians in outpatient medical clinics. There are approximately 150 allied health practitioners and around 60 residents/students at Baptist.

“There needs to be someone or a group in our case of individuals that are focused on the physicians and their concerns and issues,” Entrekin said. “We want to be the place that they know their patients will get the best care, have the best technology available and the safest environment. To do this, our focus has to be on them and the changing environment. We want to become partners with them in the healthcare arena in order to survive the changing demographics of healthcare. One of our goals is to be the first choice of our physicians, of our employees and the community we serve.”

Entrekin has been in the Medical Staff Office for 19 years, but the liaison responsibilities were added to her office in the past year and a half.

“At one time this was a full-time position, but over time the responsibilities have been folded into other existing positions,” Entrekin said. “As the individual titles and responsibilities changed, it seemed appropriate for the liaison duties to come under the Medical Staff Office umbrella where all the other medical staff organizational processes and procedures were housed. We have pulled together a team of leaders from various departments within the facility that meet and discuss ways to effectively communicate and recognize physicians, which we hope will build those relationships. We do physician satisfaction surveys; provide action plans to address issues and concerns expressed in these surveys, which are then communicated to the medical staff via various mediums; organize the physician activities and work with administration on issues that were not a part of the survey but physicians have expressed concerns about.”

Operational issues that impact patient care or a physician’s ability to practice efficient and quality medicine are usually communicated directly to administration by the physician, said Shaw.

“Physicians prefer to deal with someone with the authority that can take appropriate action to correct their concerns,” she said. “Having said that, there is a great need for someone to make rounds in the physician clinics on a regular basis and address the concerns of their office staff and the concerns of physicians who no longer come to the hospital because they utilize our hospitalists. The office staff, who may not frequent the hospital often, usually does not know who to call if they are having a problem. Our role is to facilitate communications between the practices and the appropriate managers and track the issues to a satisfactory resolution.”



June 2008

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