Compensating hospital medical staff leaders for organizational duties.

Physician leadership in hospital affairs is important to physicians, patients, and the public, as well as to hospitals. In this article, the author advocates payment to medical staff leaders for performance of the patient-protective functions of the traditional organized medical staff, including ensuring the qualifications of practitioners (credentialing) and monitoring their current performance, and focuses on questions concerning specific duties, qualifications, selection, orientation and evaluation of medical staff leaders.