Adopt a written anti-harassment policy
Adopt a written anti-harassment policy
(Editor’s note: In this second part of a two-part series on physician harassment, we discuss having a written anti-harassment policy, and we tell you how to handle repeated offenses. In last month’s issue, we discussed steps to avoid liability.)
When you update your policies to address sexual harassment, change them to prohibit all forms of unlawful harassment, advises Brian A. Lapps Jr., JD, member at Waller Lansden in Nashville, TN. Lapps, along with E. Brent Hill, JD, also a member at Waller Lansden, spoke at the most recent annual meeting of the Federated Ambulatory Surgery Association.
In the policy, explain how to report perceived abuse, Lapps says. The failure to have a policy that is posted and provided to employees it good evidence that the employer is not serious about complying with the law, he says.
Follow that policy and train managers, Lapps says. Although nonemployee doctors probably will not want to attend in-depth training, they should at least be provided a copy of the ASC’s policies so that the ASC can credibly argue that it did what it could to prevent discrimination, he and Hill explained at their presentation.1
Disseminate policies to doctors, Lapps advises. "If doctors have never been given a policy, it can be used against the center to show that it does not care about the policy," he says.
Make it a part of your credentialing application and reapplication that the physician agrees to comply with the facility’s policies and procedures, he says. "If a company can get doctors to agree to follow policies, lawsuits can sometimes be avoided," Lapps says. "Where the doctors choose not to follow a policy, the center can at least prove that it used its best efforts to protect its employees."
Have your position written into your physician bylaws, "so everyone knows up front it won’t be tolerated," advises Anita S. Lambert-Gale, RN, MES, vice president of clinical operations at HealthMark Partners in Nashville, TN. By doing that, managers always can go back to them and say, "You’re violating your own bylaws," she says.
When defending a lawsuit, it is almost worse to have a policy and not to follow it than not to have a policy at all, Lapps says. "Ignoring a policy can be used as proof that the employer does not care about its employees."
The policy should identify more than one person who can receive a complaint, in case the person who is designated to receive complaints is part of the problem, he says. "If there is a corporate compliance hotline available, this is usually a good mechanism for receiving complaints," Lapps says.
Some states, including California, require annual sexual harassment training. "Even where not required by law, the training of managers avoids many problems," he points out.
Reference
- Lapps BA, Hill EB. Dealing with the Problem Employee and Physician. Federated Ambulatory Surgery Association Program Syllabus; 2005.
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