The vision
To improve quality of care, reduce compliance risk, streamline medical staff governance, and minimize physician time in administrative tasks, ThedaCare sought to unify its medical staff across seven hospitals. To achieve buy-in, medical staff leaders needed a flexible structure with balanced representation from diverse care sites. The system Chief Medical Officer sought a collaborative, proactive approach to ensure the future unified medical staff would function as a cohesive unit.
Co-creating the solution
The system Chief Medical Officer and representatives from seven ThedaCare medical staffs partnered with Chartis to redesign disparate structures into a single medical staff with formally unified bylaws, rules, regulations, and peer review procedures. Key parts of this initiative included meeting the specific needs of every facility and ensuring fair representation for both acute care and critical access hospitals. A regulatory-based checklist ensured the health system and medical staff met all CMS and Joint Commission requirements as they prepared for the vote to accept medical staff unification and transition to a new structure.
Believe in better
The seven independent medical staffs were presented with thoughtfully drafted unified bylaws when they voted to opt-in to formally unify as one medical staff and stand up a new Medical Executive Committee. By unifying, ThedaCare and its medical staff reduced duplicative efforts and enhanced regulatory and accreditation compliance. With new unified rules, regulations, and peer review policies and structures, they will perform more meaningful peer reviews. The medical staff has laid a foundation for continued alignment to work more efficiently together to deliver reliable care.
