This week, CRC Daily covers vetting, competency assessment, and governance strategies for advanced practice professionals (APP), whose presence in the workforce often surpasses their representation on the medical staff. One barrier to medical staff membership and leadership opportunities is the patchwork of state statutes governing APPs’ scope of practice and participation on the medical staff. 

Successful credentialing teams are taking specific steps to ensure their processes are efficient and effective – you should be too. In this whitepaper, discover eight proven ways you can speed up and improve your credentialing process. These best practices and key strategies will help to enhance your credentialing in a way that benefits your organization at every level, from recruiters and medical staff professionals, to patients and providers.

The chief nursing informatics officer (CNIO) role is becoming more popular, according to a recent survey conducted by Witt/Kieffer, an executive recruitment and consulting firm in Oak Brook, Illinois. 

"Training the next generation of family physicians will require enthusiastic doctors who are able and willing to precept medical students in their practices."

- Stan Kozakowski, MD, comments on the latest American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) study of medical school graduates entering ACGME-accredited family medicine programs, for which he was corresponding author.  

Exercise testing is typically performed as an outpatient procedure by a team of healthcare providers. Cardiologists oversee exercise testing and are responsible for the interpretation of results. Increasingly, the procedure is conducted and super­vised by nonphysician practitioners, including clinical exercise physiologists, reg­istered nurses (RN) and nurse practitioners (NP), physician assistants (PA), and physical therapists (PT). 

This free resource spotlights three key perspectives on suitable involvement of nonphysician practitioners in exercise testing. 

The number of non-physician practitioners applying for privileges at hospitals today is growing rapidly. In some places, the applications from non-physicians regularly outpace those from doctors. Fashioning a dedicated committee (or subcommittee) to evaluate the credentials of non-physician practitioners allows multiple initial review committees to share the workload of assessing applications.

Find out what’s happening in the world of federal healthcare regulations by reviewing some recent headlines from across the country.

Medical staff committees are among the vehicles driving delivery of quality patient care. Effective documentation of the issues discussed and decisions made by these committees provides a road map for the medical staff and administration to follow as they pursue the organization’s mission, values, and patient care goals. Factual, concise, and organized meeting materials foster and reflect a team approach to decision-making about critical medical staff issues that affect our communities, friends, and families.

Verify and Comply, Sixth Edition, includes both credentialing and medical staff standards and regulations in one easy-to-navigate manual, giving MSPs one book that answers all their accreditation questions. This expanded guide includes ambulatory care, acute care, and managed care standards for the most popular regulators and accreditors: CMS, The Joint Commission, NCQA, DNV, HFAP, and AAAHC. From initial appointment to reappointment to medical staff functions, these standards are side by side in an easy-to-read grid.

The Medical Staff Office Manual: Tools and Techniques for Success is a comprehensive guide that maps every aspect of the medical staff office, from onboarding and orienting physicians to querying other facilities for practitioner information and effectively collaborating with physician leadership.

You now have until November 18 to enter our contests for outstanding MSPs and medical staff leaders. 

National Medical Staff Services Awareness Week is November 6–12. How will you be celebrating? Send your ideas, tips, photos, and planning materials to Editor Delaney Rebernik at drebernik@hcpro.com, and you could see your contributions featured on the CRC site. Stay tuned for details on the special deals we’re launching that week to honor the hardworking professionals at the heart of patient safety and quality care. 

Interested in sharing your opinions and learning what your colleagues are up to? Join HCPro on Wednesday, November 16, from 1 p.m.-2 p.m. EST for a medical staff-related focus group. We want to know what the hot topics are in medical staff services, what issues you are struggling with, and how we can help you meet your daily challenges. Email Karen Kondilis at kkondilis@hcpro.com to sign up.