Case Study: Medical Staff Mediation

Situation:

• A mid-size Level II facility faces increasing adversarial posturing of two physicians within the same clinical specialty
• Medical Staff leaders are unable to fully determine cause of difficulties or diffuse the counter-productive communications between the physicians
• Facility staff are being "aligned" with one or the other physician, and the gossip is rampant
• The general community (and patients) are found to be aware of the problem and patient advocacy is documenting related concerns
• There is a sense of urgency due to the escalation of counter-productive communications and committee involvement in department specific activities surrounding a new privilege request by one of the subject physicians

QMCG Team Role: Conducted a one day voluntary mediation session to define issues, defuse anger and tension, and establish agenda and timeline to work through issues identified using a six step process:

• Educate participants in alternative dispute resolution
• Agree to methodology and tools of mediation day
• Establish ground rules
• Apply specific mediation technique for physicians
• Evaluate findings and future issue lists
• Set timeline and responsibilities for outstanding issues

Mediation Conclusions: Re-established professional communications between the physicians and created future interaction methodology. Established criteria for the privilege issue discussions using facility credentialing process. Explored and resolved fifteen issues and sub issues of each. Created a future issues list and timeline for action by responsible party(ies). Determined that no other issues of concern existed.

Physician/Facility Accomplishments:

• Since mediation was conducted:

The two physicians publicly engage in appropriate personal and professional dialog

Medical Staff leaders are effectively managing issues between the physicians without difficulty

Departmental functioning has improved

Facility gossip has faded away

Patient concerns have ceased over this issue

Potential costly legal action has been avoided