Centralized systems are on credentialing horizon
We’ll wait till our state and JCAHO approve’
A major midwestern health system is currently working to create a central credentials support office for use by all hospitals in the area, not just those within that system. Its standards will exceed those of the Joint Commission and NCQA, and the cost will be about $40 to $100 per medical staff member per year. At that rate, credentialing a staff of 30 doctors would cost $3,000 at most. The support office would be present at the hospital during inspections, and verification turnaround time could be less than 10 days, eliminating the hassle of temporary privileges. (See the January 1999 issue of Hospital Peer Review for its cover story on a Florida law that mandates a standardized credentials verification program for physicians.)
Judith Wilbur, RN, director of risk management and quality assurance at Fremont-Rideout Health Group in California, says a centralized credentialing system — where you outsource to just one agency for credentials verification — makes sense "because we’re all spending a lot of money and time doing primary source verification. But until the state of California and the Joint Commission assure us that outsourcing would meet all their standards, we have to do our own verifications." Fremont-Rideout Health Group comprises Fremont Medical Center in Marysville and Rideout Memorial Hospital in Yuba City.
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