Once the OPPE/FPPE program is fully designed and implemented, an oversight committee must ensure that the various steps of the process occur as expected and that practitioners adhere to the procedures. An ineffective (but common) approach to program oversight is having the medical staff quality committee, peer review committee, or credentials committee review all OPPE reports. This approach duplicates the work of medical staff leaders, who have already reviewed the reports.

Young physicians may struggle to properly plan for their retirements due to the fact that they begin their careers later than most other professions, tend to carry more in student loans, and often lack the free time to dedicate to financial planning. AMA Insurance recently published a report on physicians’ financial preparedness that included responses from more than 2,300 practicing physicians.

“My schedule is insane. I stay up half the night taking online classes.”

-Heidi Schmidt, MD, talks about her decision to start nursing school after failing to match in a residency training program.

Most credentialing work is considered a peer review activity performed by the medical staff and governing board. As a result, state laws generally grant some amount of peer review protection to those parts of a particular credentials file that are acted upon by medical staff committees or the board. It is important to clearly establish in medical staff bylaws and related documents that key stakeholders are performing credentialing functions in a peer review capacity.

When implementing retrospective proctoring, it is important to standardize the approach. One good practice is to have medical records prescreened by a nonphysician reviewer (typically a nurse in the quality department). This pre-review is used to highlight major issues and concerns in the chart and to tab significant outcomes and can be used to abstract a basic outline of the clinical events. This makes retrospective proctoring more efficient and less burdensome on the time of a physician reviewer.

Your window into the professional experiences of MSPs across the compensation spectrum, career stages, and the care continuum.

CRC members can access a PDF of the November issue by clicking here and selecting  "DOWNLOAD FULL ISSUE" at the top of the page.

Criminal background checks are often conducted by hospitals during the initial hiring process of all employees or, in some cases, for specified types of healthcare providers. While many states require criminal background checks as a condition of initial licensure, healthcare organization may establish policies that go beyond state law.

“Stepping into a new role as the system medical director for credentialing of a large health system, I needed to get up to speed on best practices in short order. The Credentialing Resource Center Symposium provided an intensive immersive experience that poised me to take on my responsibilities with the knowledge of effective and efficient best practices. I was able to hit the ground running. It also provided a great networking opportunity.”

 —Lisa Shea, MD, Medical Director at Butler Hospital and System Medical Director for Medical Staff Credentialing at Care New England Health System in Providence, Rhode Island

CRC's Achievement Awards honor MSPs and medical staff leaders who make a difference in their organization and serve as an inspiration to the broader professional community. Now is the chance to recognize a colleague (or yourself!) for contributing to the success of the medical staff services field. Winners will be honored at the 2017 CRC Symposium, April 6-7, in Austin, Texas.

Download a copy of the 2017 Credentialing Resource Center Symposium brochure to learn more about session topics, faculty, and what you can expect to learn while in Austin.

Accreditation and quality professionals are being asked to do more than ever. Our expert instructors can help you with that. The Accreditation Specialist Boot Camp is a thorough two-and-a-half day course that provides survey coordinators and accreditation and quality professionals with best practices for survey prep, training, and overall management. The Accreditation Specialist Boot Camp provides in-depth explanations of CMS and Joint Commission requirements, and briefly covers HFAP and DNV standards if students are accredited by those bodies. Instructors focus on teaching participants how to integrate continuous survey readiness into daily operations.