The Multidisciplinary Care Conference
Chapter 7 Bedside Questions · 8 questions · about 8 minutes
Executives (CFO, CIO, CMO, CNO, COO, quality, counsel, HR) each hold a focused view and no one holds the whole picture. Governance runs as parallel, siloed committees that produce minutes instead of one signed plan, with no chartered cross-executive synthesis function chaired by an empowered clinical informatics leader.
The multidisciplinary care conference (tumor board / team rounds): many consultants, one chair, one written plan. Governance is the same mechanism run on the organization instead of the patient.
Answer as your executive team would, with the evidence in hand. Each question has a factual answer in a system you already own.
Does the organization have a chartered cross-disciplinary, cross-executive synthesis function chaired by a lead physician with explicit authority?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
When the CFO, CIO, COO, CMO and CNO disagree on a question that is clinical, technical, operational and financial at once, who decides? Is the answer a name or a process?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
How often does the Diagnostician (CMIO or equivalent) actually preside over a decision that crosses disciplines? If never, the synthesis function is not chartered.
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
Are governance meetings producing single-page plans, or minutes?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
Are discipline-specific committees nested under a cross-executive synthesis function, or running in parallel?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
In the last year, how many proposed decisions were paused or reversed because the synthesis caught something no single committee would have seen? If none, it is not working.
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
Has any senior leader sat in the CMIO's seat for a day in the last year?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
If the CMIO resigned tomorrow, would the synthesis function survive, or would committees revert to parallel operation?
Add a note: where is the evidence, or who owns it?
A reflection tool from the book, not a validated diagnostic test or benchmark. Your answers and notes stay in this browser unless you choose to send them. Please don't enter patient information.
The conference is not ceremonial activity. It is the intervention. Stated plainly, governance is coordination.
The Diagnostician, Chapter 7