Overcoming a Shortage of Non-Conflicted Specialists in Small Hospital
After experiencing inefficient and inadequate peer review, a quality manager turns to AllMed for external revie help.
A small 200-bed community hospital in the Pacific Northwest draws all physician specialists from the surrounding community. To perform peer review for the hospital’s physicians, the quality manager faced either having non-specialists review cases or finding a similarly sized and staffed community hospital to swap peer review cases with.
Deciding it was necessary to use specialists with the same credentials, she spent several months seeking out a hospital with the same medical staff profile before she could start her swap program.
After about six months, many of the peer review cases she sent out still hadn’t been completed. While the doctors from both hospitals were well-intentioned, the quality manager concluded they just did not have the extra time to review cases as originally agreed.
The few cases completed seemed “rubber stamped” and not scrutinized to ensure quality of care. In addition, there were no comments from the peer reviewers about any new training the doctors might need to improve performance.
Seeking a more effective solution, she turned to AllMed to provide external peer reviews for the practitioners in the hospital’s peer review queue. A recent pediatric case was handled by an AllMed board-certified pediatrician in active practice who is knowledgeable about small community hospital practices. He reviewed the case in depth, provided comments about where/how the pediatrician might update his skills, and case was turned around to the hospital in less than a month.
