The Doctors Company Risk Tip: Including Risk Management in Your Vacation Planning Allows You to Relax May 30, 2014 TDC Risk Tip Risk Tip, Malpractice, Risk Management, The Doctors Company 0 Because liability never takes a holiday, your vacation plans should include medical coverage arrangements for your practice, particularly when you use locum tenens. The following tips will help reduce risks in your practice and promote the safety of your patients as you plan your vacation: Review managed care contracts for relevant coverage requirements. Some managed care contracts contain very specific language on this topic and many contain indemnification clauses that could expose you to the liability of the covering physician (as well as breach of contract). Whenever possible, make secondary coverage arrangements. Confirm coverage arrangements via e-mail or fax with the locum tenens who are covering your practice in order to avoid misunderstandings, possible uncertainty of dates or time frame, and exposure to abandonment. Ensure that the practice coverage arrangements include an understanding about patient billing practices in conjunction with any managed care contracts or plans. Choose covering physicians who share your medical specialty and have privileges at the same hospitals that you do. Determine if covering physicians carry professional liability coverage and the limits of such coverage. While asking these questions could be awkward, you may be required to ask under certain managed care plans, provider agreements, and hospital bylaws. Before leaving on vacation, prepare a list of patients who are hospitalized or are in the midst of diagnostic work-up, or who have special medical problems or needs. Give this information to the covering physicians and document any specific advice you provide. Inform the attending physicians or hospitalists of any hospitalized patients you are following about your coverage arrangements, and document the hospital chart to reflect these conversations. Advise your patients of the coverage arrangements and give them the covering physicians’ names. Make each hospital where you have on-call responsibilities aware of the dates of your unavailability and the identity and phone numbers of the covering physicians. Give similar notice to your answering service and office staff. Upon returning from vacation, promptly confer with all covering physicians. Document what you were told by the covering physicians about any significant developments in patients’ clinical course or treatment while you were away. Consider implementing these fundamental loss prevention measures for even brief periods when you are unavailable, such as observance of religious holidays, attending medical conferences, personal illness, or a long weekend. Unfortunately, vulnerability to claims is not diminished on these occasions. Contributed by The Doctors Company. For more patient safety articles and practice tips, visit www.thedoctors.com/patientsafety. Comments are closed.