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dialogue
14
MAY / JUN 2017
I
Healthcare Journal of Baton Rouge
Chief Editor Smith W. Hartley
Can you tell
me a little bit about your role as Chief Med-
ical Officer?
Dr. Andrew Olinde
I was Chief of Staff for
the past six years, until January, and basi-
cally tenured out. It is usually a two-year
term and you can serve up to three terms.
They wanted me to stay on as the Chief of
Staff so now I am Chief Medical Officer. It’s
more of an administrative job where you
work with hospital administration. I’m also
a vascular surgeon and have been in pri-
vate practice in Baton Rouge for the past
20 years.
I think that I’m still basically in the
trenches with the other doctors, so I know
what’s going on. I think they look at me as
a surgeon, a physician, versus an adminis-
trator. Basically, my job as the Chief Medi-
cal Officer is to work with physicians at the
hospital and also with the administration—
make sure they work together well. I’m on
the Board of Trustees and I report to the
board on quality of care and take care of
medical issues or medical staff.
Editor
What are some of the characteristics
that go into being a Chief Medical Officer,
as opposed to just working as a physician?
Olinde
Typically, you have to have been
in a leadership role for a number of years.
That’s usually how it works because, even
being Chief of Staff, you have to be on certain
committees, have to know how the hospi-
tal works, you have to know the physicians.
Hopefully, you are respected as a physician—
well thought of. You pretty much have to
know what’s going on politically; you have
to know the medical community.
You can’t be polarizing. You have to get
along with the medical staff, you have to
know the administration, the CEO, the CFO,
the Chief Nursing Officer. You work with all
of these people. They are hoping that you
can relate issues to the staff about what
needs to be done at the hospital. And then,
they are not physicians so they are relying
on you to let them know how the physi-
cians feel.
You also have to know all the bylaws.
Hospitals have medical bylaws, rules, and
regulations; you have to be very familiar
with that because that is very important. You
have to really follow your bylaws or you get
into a lot of trouble.
Editor
Can we talk a little about the Chief
of Surgery role, too, and how surgery has
or is evolving in Baton Rouge or just in
general?
Olinde
Sure. I was actually Chief of Surgery
at Ochsner in Baton Rouge before I left. I
was at Ochsner for 10 years. I was also chief
of surgery here at the General a number of
years back, and the basic goal of Chief of
Surgery is just to make sure that the oper-
ating room runs smoothly; make sure that
physicians follow the bylaws; take care of
the disciplinary actions. They also deal with
peer review. You have to look at complica-
tions or outcomes of patient surgery. It’s very
important. The Chief of Surgery has to deal
with the OR Supervisor closely. There are so
many things we have to do if someone goes
to have surgery—a preoperative evaluation,
the medical authorization, all these things
we have to do. And a lot of it is required by
CMS. We make certain that we follow these
things because without them you can’t do
the surgery, you won’t be paid, it just can’t
be done. You have to be sure turnaround
times are quick. Baton Rouge General has
15 operating rooms and we have to turn
these rooms quickly so that surgeons get
their work done. You have to do schedul-
ing, you’ve got to check on sterility, equip-
ment problems, all these different things. So,
it gets pretty involved.
Editor
As far as evaluating the surgeons and
peer review, can you just talk a little bit about
how surgeons are evaluated?
Olinde
Well, what we do at Baton Rouge
General, is we have a division chair meeting
where all the chairmen of different depart-
ments, medicine, surgery, anesthesia, differ-
ent divisions, review any cases that, let’s say,
unfortunately said outcome is not what you
want. We look at those things and we report
back to individual surgeons, but also have
different types of CMS reports, complica-
tion rates, mortality rates we look at. There
are different metrics that we use to look at
the quality of surgeons, to make sure
we have the highest quality here.
I noticed in the other hospitals
they have different ways of look-
ing at it, but we are pretty famil-
iar with complication rates, mor-
tality rates. There is also patient
satisfaction and communication
by doctors. There are numer-
ous things that we look
at with individual
surgeons to make
sure that we have
the best quality
surgeons at our
facilities.
Editor
Can
you talk a lit-
tle bit about
the teach-
ing end, too?
Maybe how
some less expe-
rienced surgeons
get involved? Do
you work with
residents?
Olinde
In differ-
ent roles that I had
I noticed that at
the medical exec-
utive commit-
tee, which is the
big committee
that meets once
a month with the
administration to look
at various things about