Message from the Chief Medical Officer

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For the first time, we are sending DOCLine electronically to everyone on the Medical Staff. Thanks to your cooperation in supplying your preferred email addresses, our list is almost complete. If you know anyone not getting these announcements, please tell them to contact me. And please let us know if your email address changes.

Physician Satisfaction Survey.

Now that we can electronically communicate more easily, we will use email to send out a Physician Satisfaction Survey. It's brief, easy to complete and we hope it will give you the opportunity to let us know how we're doing—and what we need to improve. Please look for it in the next couple of weeks.

Joint Commission Survey – Physician Issues

Now that we've successfully passed (quite admirably I might add) our latest Joint Commission survey, I do need to remind you about a couple of important findings. Please sign, date and TIME every chart entry in our records. Give special attention to the "time." It's important given how much happens to our inpatients during any given day. Also, avoid "unapproved" abbreviations, even in your progress notes. They can be misleading. The most common one is "QD". Finally, most of our signatures are pretty awful. Please print and/or use your unique Physician ID number after your name.

Physician Orientation

How do new members of our Medical Staff get oriented to all the intricacies, rules, policies, practices, opportunities, contacts, and expectations when they join us? The answer is not very well. With that in mind, the Executive Committee has endorsed a mandatory orientation session for all new members. Sometime during their first three months on staff, new physicians will be obliged to attend a brief orientation program designed to help them more easily become established and effective. We are completing the details and will publish the program here in DocLine. Suggestions are welcome.

Your Feedback

This is the third issue of DOCLine. We continue to structure this newsletter with categories of What's New, On-Board, Kudos and Keeping Up. To make the content manageable for you, we keep the text short, with links for further information if you care to dive deeper. But we don't want to work in a vacuum. If you have suggestions, comments, or criticisms, please let me know.

Matt