Although ransomware is not a new phenomenon, a recent increase in reported attacks, along with several well-publicized cases, have raised the public's awareness of the threat it poses. Ransomware can be incredibly damaging because it is designed to infect a system, find and encrypt the system's data, and lock out users until they pay a ransom—typically in an anonymous electronic currency like bitcoin—to regain access through a decryption key.

This week's free resource is a sample core privileging form for physician assistants in pediatrics. Core privileging forms reflect industry best practices and expert research for a variety of physician, advanced practice, and allied health specialties and subspecialties.

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Platinum and Platinum Plus members of the Credentialing Resource Center have access to over 100 physician and allied healthcore privilege forms. Click hereto learn more about the myriad benefits of joining the industry's premier destination for credentialing, privileging, and peer review expertise.

This series has emphasized time and again the need to be as clear as possible within each part of the fair hearing and due process section of your bylaws. Accordingly, the medical staff bylaws should plainly articulate a member’s right to a hearing, as well as how that hearing will be conducted. The fair hearing procedures are not required to provide the same safeguards that courts of law provide; however, there must be certain minimal procedural safeguards for the hearing process to be considered “fair” under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (HCQIA). Previous articles in this series outlined best practices for hearing panel composition, a presiding officer, and the request for and initiation of a hearing. We now turn to the process for the hearing.

The first step to moving toward a just culture to improve patient safety in clinical learning environments is undertaking a culture assessment to determine your organization's current culture. Once it has been completed, your organization's leadership has the daunting task of looking at what the findings tell them, including what the staff perceives as the organization's problem areas. In many cases, their perceptions are on target, but staff members are also fairly accurate in their assessment of the organization’s strengths. Once leadership has taken a look at what the staff has told them, it is up to the administrative team to work with department managers and staff to plan the change process.