2010 Medical Staff Goals

1. Improve the flow of information about hospital affairs to all members of the medical staff. I hope to do this through monthly columns in Physician Cognition, through timely e-mails and through quarterly meetings at more convenient times and places than in the past. I will also be urging hospital administrative offices to send out important information to the medical staff more frequently.

2. Increase medical staff involvement. This is always difficult because of the busy schedules most of us have - both at work and at home. Nevertheless, we spend most of our professional lives within the Newton-Wellesley Hospital medical community. Therefore, we need to be as informed as we can about the institution and our community.

The trick is to find the most practical and least painful way to enhance involvement. I have already been gratified by the overwhelming response I have received to the e-mail that went out seeking medical staff members who would volunteer to serve on one of the hospital committees.

And following on the innovations Jake Joffe introduced last year, we will continue our resuscitation of the Quarterly Staff Meeting by seeking to make it an event that we actually look forward to going to. Working with the rest of the medical staff leadership, we will try to present interesting and informative speakers on the financial, administrative and political changes in American medicine today. At our next quarterly meeting, for example, we will have a presentation on the Newton-Wellesley Hospital PHO, how it affects each of us and how various changes in medical reimbursement may affect it.

3. Improve the various electronic order and medical record systems at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Many of us are frustrated on a daily basis by how difficult it is to enter orders and discharge patients on our current systems. There are too many redundant clicks, too many obscure fields to fill and a lot of wasted time. We know from our own experience at other institutions that hospital electronic systems do not have to be like this.

We are constantly told that the problem is our legacy Meditech system. Yet, with the scores of thousands of dollars spent on patch-up software programming at the hospital each year, we have a right to expect better results. I have already appointed three tech-savvy members of our medical staff to the Clinical Applications Committee of the hospital to bring these problems to the forefront and seek solutions to them.

4. Address parking concerns. In some ways we are a victim of our own success. The increase in patient visits to Newton-Wellesley Hospital over the last several years and the increase in the size of our medical staff has made finding parking on a daily basis a major headache for patients, hospital workers and physicians.

The transition this fall from parking under the Green Building to the back hospital parking lot was annoying for many of us. Additionally, several difficult problems remain such as parking for doctors coming in for one or two hours during the day to make rounds or to do short cases in the operating room.

I continue to work with Dan Gross, the administrator who has responsibility for this area, to make parking for the medical staff as uncomplicated and hassle-free as possible. We are discussing both short-term and long-term solutions. We have a long way to go but will continue our efforts to improve the less-than-ideal current situation.

5. Expand the range of medical staff services. I would like to consider having medical staff leadership serve the medical staff in ways other than just hospital business this year. Yes, we distribute Red Sox tickets. And yes, this is the year for our Holiday Party - we have one every other year. But given the size of our medical staff and the wealth of entertainment options in Boston and New England, it seems we might be able to do more.

Therefore, I will be seeking medical staff members who would be willing to work with me in setting up a Medical Staff Activities Committee to explore various entertainment, dining, sports, skiing, film and other fun and social activities for those who are interested. We might consider forming some sports teams such as softball, soccer, basketball or hockey which could compete with other similar teams in our area.

Conclusion
So these are some of my goals. I hope at least one of them resonates with each of you. And I look forward to working with all of you to make our hospital as strong an institution as it can possibly be, to ensure that it continues to be a rewarding place for all of us to work and - most importantly - to continue to keep it an institution in which we can provide our patients with the best possible care.