Employment Agreement or Professional Review Action: Varied Pathways to Achieve a Common Goal of Physician Quality Oversight (On-Demand Webinar)

Date: 01/24/23

Overview: When quality issues related to physician performance are identified, there are several options available to an organization to respond. The organization could conduct a professional review action in accordance with its Medical Staff Bylaws to gather more information about the issue and determine whether an adverse action with respect to the physician’s Medical Staff privileges is warranted. This process, however, can be time consuming and costly, and if not done properly, could subject the organization to liability from a potential lawsuit brought by the physician. Organizations may also lack an understanding of when professional review actions would result in National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) reporting, which if not done correctly could also open the organization up to potential penalties.

An additional layer of complexity is handling urgent quality issues where a summary suspension might be justified. In these situations, an organization may seek a voluntary agreement to not exercise privileges from the physician; however, these arrangements may also trigger NPDB reporting obligations. In light of the complexities related to professional review actions, some organizations prefer to address quality issues through a physician’s employment agreement. This path can seem cleaner, but again there are important pitfalls to be aware of.

This webinar will address the strategies related to handling physician quality oversight issues through professional review actions versus the physician’s employment agreement.

Speaker Information:

Eric Plinnke, Partner, Dinsmore & Shohl

Michelle Block, Associate General Counsel & Director of Clinical Risk, MetroHealth

Continuing Education:

CLE: AHLA’s live distance learning webinars are pre-approved for CLE credit in the following states: AL, IL, KS, ME, MS, NE, NJ, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WI, and WV. Please refer to the Distance Learning CLE State Chart on our Continuing Education page to review the reporting procedure in these state 

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AHLA is seeking CPE credits for live and on demand webinars. The maximum number of credits available is 1.80.