Insights from Ludi

Health systems are expanding and continue to acquire new facilities. This type of growth requires examination of all the legacy physician “deals” that are in place. Yet, at Ludi^TM, we often hear that examination of physician administrative contracts that include medical directorships, co-management, and shared or on call agreements are often put on the back burner for health system teams. We get it, management of physician contracts is messy, and teams do not get overly excited about having to deal with this process. Teams are short on time and people, so this is the bucket that gets pushed down the priority list or even completely ignored.

Today hospitals still face many regulatory and compliance risks. However, we aren’t out of luck quite yet, because there are several ways hospitals can reduce these types risks. Here, we highlight six ways to avoid costly fines and settlements specifically related to physician compensation practices.

Administrative physician agreements have been written for your physicians with help from your legal department or counsel. The clauses are there to be followed for numerous reasons. Perhaps it is to meet your organization’s goals with the way you align with doctors as well as for a variety of compliance reasons. Whatever the reason, it’s important to handle your physician agreements in the way they’re written, even if they’re complex. Failure to do so leaves room for incredible consequences that can affect your organization in a variety of ways.

Finding a ‘foolproof’ process to manage physician agreements can be a greater challenge than anticipated – perhaps so much so that it's often a task that’s put off within the organization. Once you make the decision to better manage physician agreements, there are a number of advantages you can expect to gain throughout the organization. Here’s a 30,000 foot view of changes you will see once you put time and energy into this problem by automating.

Physician agreements are complex with tremendous detail around how the relationship will be governed, what duties are included and how compensation will work. While most organizations are quite proficient in the setup of these agreements, few are very good at managing the complexities of the agreement after they are executed.