July 18, 2013

Question: We just put a new peer review process in place and want to be sure that we have adequate clinical staff (R.N.s) to support the process.  There are approximately 350 physicians on our Medical Staff.  Do you have any benchmarks that you could share?

Answer: As we work with hospitals and Medical Staffs around the country to revamp their peer review processes to make them more effective and efficient, questions like yours come  up over and over.  For a long time, we didn’t have good answers.

So, we began to survey registrants at our Peer Review Clinic to try to get data on that, and other, peer review questions.  While our sample size is still relatively small, our survey results reveal the following regarding your question:

Medical   Staff Size

FTE   Clinical Support Staff

Cases   Reviewed/Month

100-499

80%       1-3 Support Staff

17%       4-6 Support Staff

47.1%                  1-10

29.4%                  11-25

17.6%                  26-50

5.9%                    Over 50

We invite you to complete our peer review survey online by going to:  http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PeerReviewClinicSurvey

Obviously, the larger our sample size, the more reliable the data will be.
We will share the results in future Questions of the Week.

And, plan to join us for The Peer Review Clinic this fall. It will be offered in October in Chicago and in November in New York.