Free form Friday: Medical staff services department reciprocal audit tool
For the February issue of Medical Staff Briefing, I spoke with three MSPs who conduct reciprocal audits on each other’s medical staff services departments. Marna Sorensen, CPMSM, director of medical staff services, and Michelle Zachary, CPCS, credentialing specialist at Portneuf Regional Medical Center in Pocatello, ID regularly exchange visits with Chris Hinton, CPCS, medical staff coordinator at St. Luke’s Magic Valley Medical Center in Twin Falls, ID. Marna and Michelle look over Chris’ files, policies, and procedures and offer their advice for improvement, and Chris does the same for Marna and Michelle. It offers a low-cost way for both parties to hone their skills. It’s also a great way to build professional relationships.
If you engage in reciprocal audits with a medical staff services department in your area, use this reciprocal audit tool to help you determine whether your colleague’s files are in tip-top shape. Just work your way from the top down to determine whether each file includes all of the necessary information—you may catch something that your colleague unintentionally overlooked! To learn more about reciprocal audits, check out February Medical Staff Briefing.
Please note that this tool is an example, and you should work with your medical staff services department to modify it to fit your facility’s needs.
About the Author: Elizabeth (Liz) Jones is an associate editor at HCPro. She writes and contributes to several monthly newsletters including Medical Staff Briefing, Hospitalist Leadership Advisor, and Credentialing and Peer Review Legal Insider. Liz graduated from Salem (MA) State College in 2003 with a B.A. in professional writing. Before joining HCPro, Liz wrote for a national monthly business publication where she gained experience in executive-level business and healthcare issues.
Sally Pelletier | Jan 19, 2010 | Reply
In these economic times, implementing this type of cost saving measure goes a long way towards promoting the value of the medical staff services department. Not to mention the benefits that each party will gain from identifying areas for improvement in the credentialing process and through a sharing of experiences and fresh ideas. There are many different reasons for conducting credentialing audits – e.g. internal and external compliance; measuring performance, monitoring timeframes, making sure that practitioners only practice within privileges granted, etc. Even more important is to make sure to customize your audit tool specific to each organization’s accreditation, regulatory, and internal requirements and to target the areas you’ve identified as the reason for the audit. Are you seeking to validate compliance with some or all required credentialing elements? Auditing specific aspects such as timeliness of reappointments? Make sure you determine what the specific information is that you need to know.