The traditional arrangement when a physician applies for clinical privileges at a health system is that the medical staff services department collects information from multiple sources to verify the physician’s current competence specifically related to the privileges requested. Then the medical staff, through its defined processes (be it a credentials committee, a medical executive committee, or both), ultimately makes recommendations about those privilege requests to the governing board, which approves, modifies, or rejects the medical staff recommendations. With employed physicians, the process is basically the same but with a few little twists and turns that medical staff leaders should understand.

Established providers in psychiatry saw their total compensation increase 7.69%—the most among all specialties—from 2018 to 2019, according to the Medical Group Management Association’s latest Provider Compensation and Production Report.

Have an all-star MSP on your team? We want to know! Email CRC editor Karla Accorto at kaccorto@hcpro.com with their name, organization, email address, and a few sentences about what makes them such a great MSP and team member. Your nominated MSP could be featured in an upcoming issue of our Credentialing Resource Center Digest!

Performing primary source verifications, credentialing and privileging practitioners, participating in committee meetings, ensuring practitioner competency, and safeguarding patient care are just a few of the crucial day-to-day tasks performed by MSPs. Under normal circumstances, these processes are nuanced and require specific skill and expertise, and in a pandemic, these essential processes become complicated.

Employing physicians can have many benefits for both physicians and organizations, which is why this option is becoming more popular. But have you thought about how it can also benefit patients and care as well? However, before your organization can achieve patient, staff, and physician satisfaction through an employment model, leaders first need to identify what they want to accomplish in the community.