Medical Staff Joins SCMS and MSSNY en masse. Can we achieve clinical integration?

The landmark vote to raise medical staff dues at Mather last week is the first step toward a more unified, energized, and effective medical staff. Providing the entire medical staff membership in the Suffolk County Medical Society and MSSNY is a visionary approach to an inclusive form of resistance and political change. But does it make us clinically integrated? An Advisory Board publication that reviews "Six strategies to Align with Independent Physicians in Value Creation" is now available.  Medical staff leadership will receive a copy of this paper at the next Mather Physician Executive Committee Meeting on August 19th in conference room 3 at 7 am. If you would like your own copy to review, know anyone else who is interested in clinical integration, or want to meet as a group around the study of accountable care and clinical integration, please contact me.

Physician Advisory Council Workgroups

After our last meeting, Joan sent an email to have us sign up for different workgroup projects, centered around the clinical order sets and processes that must be written for

• admissions
• transfers
• discharges
• documentation

 Please RSVP to Joan at jfaro@matherhospital.org , if you have not already done so. Once the groups are set, the meeting hours will be scheduled for fall/winter 2010-2011. You will be compensated for your time.

Meaningful Use Guidelines – attend a webinar at Mather this week

Want to find out where YOUR stimulus money went, and how to get the money earmarked for physicians struggling with the transition to Electronic Medical Records? Join me in the ED conference room at one of the two webinars coming up this week. One is on Tuesday, July 27th at 1:30 to 2:30 PM and is presented by MedFusion (an Intuit company). The other, on Wednesday, July 28th is at 12:15, presented by athenahealth and is endorsed by the Medical Society of the State of New York. Guidelines for the meaningful use of Electronic Health Records by physicians’ offices and other providers (hospitals, nursing homes) were released by CMS on July 12, 2010. This defining moment has been anticipated for a year and a half, since the signing of ARRA (the Stimulus Plan) in 2009, as guidelines were drafted, commented on and refined to facilitate the adoption of electronic health records in our practices. Please contact me by email  or call Tiffany at Joan Faro’s office (631) 476-2866 for further details.