News roundup January 18-22

Are you considering a change in your credentialing software or a move to an automated system? Modern medical staff services departments are increasingly turning to technologies that allow MSPs and other credentialing stakeholders across the organization to go paperless; house large volumes of quality data in a centralized, searchable, and secure location; facilitate virtual committee meetings; purchase managed care modules; trend initial and reappointment turnaround times; and more.

The Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division Court (the “Court”) granted defendants’ motion to dismiss, finding that a plaintiff must adequately identify both the commercial market and the defendant’s detrimental effect on the market in order to succeed in an antitrust claim. The court also found that physicians do not have a private cause of action under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA) and must first file a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in order to bring a Title VII claim to court.

The gender pay gap is not news. In 2016, a Forbes article pointed out that the healthcare and social assistance industry had the fourth highest gender pay gap behind the finance and insurance; public administration; and professional, scientific, and technical services industries, even though women held 80% of the jobs in the healthcare a­nd social assistance industry. The study was conducted by PayScale and included information collected from 1.8 million employees between October 2014 and October 2016. PayScale also ­surveyed 80,000 men and women about gender inequity, finding that workplace perceptions of the wage gap varied based on an employee’s education. For example, the report stated, “The higher a woman’s education, the more likely she was to believe that gender inequity was a problem at her organization” (Kauflin, 2016).