Making Rules Everyone Can Play By

When the national private hospital accrediting agency established controversial new rules regulating medical staffs, they established a task force to implement the rules.

The California Hospital Association (CHA) asked us to serve on its behalf as a task force member.  We knew the new rules would undermine trust and promote acrimony among individual members of hospital medical staffs and the medical staffs' and hospitals' leaders.  So, we suggested compromise provisions that catalyzed a year of productive dialogue among the various interests represented on the task force.

Our long experience with the players on all sides of the debate enabled us to negotiate workable new rules that balanced the medical staffs' desire for autonomy with the medical staff leaders' and hospitals' need for accountability.  By entrusting us with their seat at the table, CHA and Nossaman were able to contribute to a new set of rules that help foster cooperation rather than conflict.