MEC Update: Unified Medical Staff

By Marc Belcastro, DO, chief medical officer, Premier Health and Miami Valley Hospital

You may or may not have seen an email that was sent in mid-September offering an opportunity to vote for a unified medical staff across Premier Health’s hospitals. The voting closed on September 30 and the result was a near unanimous “yes” in favor of transitioning to one medical staff.

The final step will be the approval by the Premier Health Board of Trustees in October.  If approved, a large amount of work will begin as we rewrite and publish the bylaws, restructure the credentialing, and prepare for a system-level Medical Executive Committee. We anticipate this work will take us into the first quarter of 2021 before the unified medical staff is able to function and meetings are fully operational.

Please pay close attention to your emails for opportunities to run for any medical staff positions that currently exist, or the new ones created by the unified structure. We want to continue to emphasize that this change will not automatically provide you with privileges at every hospital, only membership. Privileges at other hospitals must be requested individually but will be more streamlined when all the new processes are in place.

Back to the October 2020 issue of Premier Pulse