Hi, everybody.
Welcome to module eight.
This module's focus is a broad category of medical staff,
how we choose them, what our responsibilities are,
how it fits into this overall hospital structure.
Traditionally, medical staff have been just one leg
of this three legged stool of the hospital structure.
Two other legs being governing body and the management team.
All three legs of the stool have this role to play
in the medical staffs organization and how it functions.
As we talked about, hospitals are big complex organizations.
We often just think of medical services
like clinical operations as what a hospital does.
Most Americans do.
However, the complex systems of modern hospitals include
teams for medical equipment,
for technology, laboratory, diagnostic services,
not to mention all the other patient care services
connecting with other external partners.
Hospitals have enormous structures.
As many of you know, hospital administrators are responsible
for the overall management and operation of a hospital
or healthcare organization.
The primary role of these folks is to ensure
the hospital runs smoothly, efficiently, effectively,
help promote high quality care.
Other roles that have leadership components
that are important parts of hospitals
or healthcare organizations, human resources,
responsible for recruiting, hiring,
training, managing professionals
and staff, which includes physicians, nurses,
other healthcare professionals, support staff, technicians.
Likewise, facility management huge part
of a hospital structure.
They're often responsible
for maintaining the physical infrastructure, buildings,
equipment, grounds.
Hospital campuses are now pretty big, as you know.
Informational technology.
So those who oversee electronic medical records,
patient portals, those digital healthcare records,
digital healthcare tools.
Many hospitals have quality improvement teams
or agencies or even departments
to ensure the hospital provides high quality care,
meets or and exceeds standards, meets regulations.
And that can include legal teams.
And finally, hospitals have integrated
or collaborative community programs, those who work with
healthcare providers outside the campus,
government agencies to help promote access
to healthcare services.
So as we all know, healthcare is not just about doctors,
nurses, and patients.
There's all these different roles,
including those folks coming to the hospital
to do their work.
One of the interesting questions that we're now ready
to start talking about is, does that make them an employee?
This complexity in how the law works here.
Let's start with hospital privileges, for example.
Hospital privileges refer to that permission granted
by the hospital or the healthcare facility to a physician
or maybe another healthcare provider
to perform specific medical procedures
or treatments in that facility.
It does not make you an employee of the facility,
but you come into the facility to do your work.
Hospital privileges are granted based on qualifications,
training, experience, professional credentials.
Healthcare providers must be granted
hospital privileges before they provide,
they do their job in that setting.
Process of obtaining privileges usually is complex.
It involves submitting an application,
reviewing your qualifications.
You know, there might be a team that reviews it,
including, you know, what is the professional's education,
training, clinical experience.
This might be done by a committee.
There might be an interview process.
They determine your clinical skills, your expertise.
So once granted,
a physician or another healthcare practitioner
might be granted hospital privileges.
And so then you can perform your specific procedures
or treatments in the facility, in the hospital,
somewhere on that campus.
These privileges are typically granted
for a specific period of time.
They can be remote, revoked if the provider fails to comply
with policy procedures or maybe even standards.
And a good example of this might be surgery, anesthesia,
obstetrics, gynecology, cardiology.
So maybe a smaller hospital doesn't have these specific
practices or physicians working there.
So they give them privileges to come in and do that work.
Hospital privileges are an important aspect
of our whole healthcare delivery system
to help ensure patients receive good care
from qualified and experienced healthcare providers
and receive care in a wide array of services.
So as I talk about that
you might be thinking about last week and the week before
discussion about like, oh, independent contractor.
Exactly.
So an independent contractor in healthcare
is a professional who provides services on, you know,
a contractual basis rather than being employed.
There's a different employee employer type of relationship.
Independent contractors can include physicians, nurses,
therapists, other healthcare providers.
You can even have janitorial
or environmental services be outside contracted.
'Cause the independent contractors,
healthcare professionals, they're not employees
of the healthcare facility
and they're responsible for you know, their own things,
taxes, insurance, business expenses.
They might work for an entity that provides
all these outside contracted services.
They might work for themselves.
They can work on a freelance or per diem basis.
They might work for multiple healthcare facilities
or organizations.
Maybe they, you know,
do different hospitals on different days of the week.
So independent contractors in healthcare are often
providing these specialized services
at a healthcare facility to fill in gaps in staffing
or to provide some kind of expertise.
A hospital can contract with an independent physician
to cover a specific medical specialty,
because they don't have that
they might contract with a you know,
a therapist to do services that they don't need full time.
The use of independent contractors
in healthcare is just very beneficial
to both healthcare facilities and to the professionals.
Provides flexibility, cost savings,
and it means that not everybody has to be full-time.
So it just creates a lot of flexibility.
Also, it's often a higher wage rate.
So freelance or independent contractor
usually makes a higher amount of money
than they do if they're a employee.
But you know, what we're gonna talk about this week
it's for healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals
you really have to consider the legal
and regulatory implications of this relationship,
including issues related to insurance liability and taxes.
But you know, you might be thinking about
specifically liability.
So that's one of the things we're going to
dive into this week,
and I'll see you in the discussion forum
as we start talking about that.