Recent Articles
Celebrate National Medical Staff Services Awareness Week with HCPro
As members of the medical staff services department, your hard work often flies under the radar. Sure patients are happy when they receive great care from their physician, but they may not realize how that physician became a trusted member of the medical staff. Or, how many times have you had to explain to friends and family what it is that you do? But this week is your week!
In 1992, President George Bush declared the first week of November as National Medical Staff Services Awareness Week. In honor of all that you do (and not just during the first week of November) HCPro is offering you and your colleagues a 15% discount on all of HCPro’s medical staff and credentialing products from Nov. 6-12. Visit the HCMarketplace and enter EO107658A during check out to receive your discount.
On behalf of HCPro, and as a patient who has always received great care from exceptional physicians, thanks for all of your hard work!
Featured webcast: Managing adverse actions
Adverse actions are a serious matter that requires serious attention. From prevention to investigation to reporting, how can you ensure your organization has the best processes in place? In the 90-minute live webcast, “Adverse Actions: Steps to Prevent, Manage and Report,” Joanne Hopkins, JD, and Anne Roberts, CPCS, CPMSM, will discuss how deal with an adverse action from beginning to end. Listeners will learn how to prevent adverse actions through education, how to prepare for an investigation, how to set clear guidelines and expectations for the peer review committee, what types of corrective action can be used, due process obligations, and reporting obligations.
Sponsored by the 15th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, the webcast will be held on Thursday, Oct. 27 at 1 p.m. EST. Participating in the live webcast or purchasing the CD to listen to at a later date cost just $159.20. For more information, click here.
Make the most out of OPPE and FPPE
While at the 35th annual NAMSS conference a few weeks ago, I sat in on a discussion about OPPE and FPPE; specifically about how to get the most beneficial usage from these two tools with limited resources. The session presented by Jonathan Burroughs, MD, MBA, FACPE, and Mary Baker, DHA, CPMSM, served as a reminder that OPPE and FPPPE were established to help organizations, not hinder their credentialing and privileging processes. When times are tough and resources are limited, we have a tendency to get bogged down by all of the things we have to do and forget the significance of why we are doing them. Burroughs and Baker shed light on the importance of OPPE and FPPE while also offering some useful tips on how to make these processes more efficient.
In discussing OPPE, Burroughs recommended choosing indicators that measure important aspects of each performance dimension. These indicators can and should change. As new indicators are added into the mix, retire the ones that are not as useful. Burroughs suggested asking each department for one or two things they would like to see improved in the indicator selection process, then trying out those recommendations for a year or two before deciding whether to add them as a requirement for reappointment.
As for FPPE, Baker suggested that FPPE should not be a one size fit all process. Practitioners who bring similar experience and/or practice patterns can be treated in a similar way. The Joint Commission allows for flexibility in FPPE, which should be taken advantage of. “You have the ability to stop, shorten, or prolong FPPE,” said Baker during her talk. For example, if a practitioner’s competence can be evaluated in three or four shifts (an ED physician for example) there is no need to perform FPPE for three to six months. Because concurrent proctoring is time consuming, Baker recommended only using it when necessary. Another way to capitalize on FPPE is to take advantage of technology. Teleproctoring, simulation, and procedure recording are all becoming more popular as acceptable forms of measuring competency. Technology is being utilized for efficiency and patient safety all over the rest of the hospital, so why not in the medical staff office as well?
We’d love to hear from you: Do you use technology to make OPPE/FPPE easier? If so, email me at kkondilis@hcpro.com.
New on the job: Learning in the lone star state
As the new editor in the medical staff and credentialing division, my first two weeks at HCPro were spent not only learning how the office operates but also the many acronyms I need to know to survive in this field: MSSP, CVO, NPDB, MEC, FPPE, OPPE. So when I was asked to attend the annual NAMSS conference (add that to my acronym list) in Dallas, I jumped at the opportunity. How many people are lucky enough to attend a three-day class held by one of the national organizations supporting their field?
There was an overarching theme to all of the sessions I attended, which has also been a recurring theme in the books and newsletters I read these past few weeks: MSSPs have a lot on their plates, and the pile keeps getting bigger while the utensils needed to clear the plate keep getting smaller. What impressed me most at NAMSS was that despite this growing trend of more responsibilities and fewer resources, the MSSPs at the conference didn’t seem overwhelmed. They just wanted to hear from others and share their approaches to improving the MSSD. That’s probably why in most of the sessions I attended, people were sitting on the floors and lining the walls of the overcrowded rooms, eager to learn something new.
Another theme throughout the conference was how changes in healthcare will affect MSSDs. MSSPs are not insulated from these changes. For example, the number of employed or contracted practitioners at hospitals continues to grow and MSSPs need to spend more time and effort on-boarding and credentialing these new practitioners. Instead of departments within the same system acting as silos, why not find a way to share this information and eliminate duplication of services? That was the message from Vicki Searcy, CPMSM; Wendy Crimp, BSN, MBA, CPHQ; and Renne Aird Dengler, RN, MS, CPMSM, CPCS, during their presentation on the Accountable Credentialing Organization. They recommended creating a physician network services department to better align the process from recruitment to credentialing, leading to a faster turnaround time for practitioners to be enrolled with payers and generate revenue for the hospital.
Todd Sagin, MD, JD, discussed how ACOs will affect MSSDs. “It’s how the team functions that is going to matter,” was the point he wanted everyone to understand. ACOs will have quality benchmarks they have to meet to get paid, so there will not be room for weak links. At the same time, hospitals are recruiting more physicians who are used to practicing in an outpatient setting under less scrutiny. With the physician shortage predicted to increase in the coming years, hospitals will not have the leeway to just get rid of its weak links. The outcome, according to Sagin, will be a greater emphasis on peer reviews and remediation, meaning more work for MSSPs. The advice from Sagin, and most of the other speakers at NAMMS, was for the MSSPs to become as involved as possible in the changes taking place at their organizations. Ignoring the changes being made will not make them go away and will only lead to missed opportunities to keep the stack on the plate from getting bigger or the utensil pile getting smaller.
Join our eSolutions Development Partner Program
HCPro’s eSolutions Team has launched the Development Partner Program to integrate the voice of our customers in the product development process. You’ll help us best understand your day-to-day world including challenges, needs, and objectives, and gather rich product feedback that will allow us to build an eSolution that fulfills an important need and delivers a valuable solution.
HCPro will integrate your ideas and feedback into the early phases of eSolutions product development, helping to develop best-in-class solutions that exceed your expectations. Currently this includes a medical staff solutions offering. With minimal involvement of your team’s time, we’ll go through a four-phase feedback process where your input helps directly guide product development.
Interested? Click this link and go to the Development Partner Program registration page for more information. We are limiting the number of partners so that we can build quality relationships.
Apply to be a speaker at CRC Symposium 2012
The Credentialing Resource Center is excited to put the call out for speakers to present at the 15th Annual Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 10-11, 2012 at the Hilton Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fl.
That’s right, to celebrate the 15th year of this two-day conference for MSPs and medical staff leaders, we’ve decided to shake things up a bit. We’re leaving Las Vegas and bringing the show to Orlando, right on the Walt Disney property!
In addition to a new location, we’re looking for speakers who can present interactive workshops on topics such as privileging, legal issues, accreditation, best practices for measuring physician competency, and just about anything else medical staff-related.
If you’re interested in applying, please download the application and e-mail it to editor Julie McCoy (jmccoy@hcpro.com) by September 14th.
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Majority of physicians participating in maintenance of certification
Thousands of physicians who belong to the American Board of Medical Specialties are enrolling annually in the recertification process known as Maintenance of Certification (MOC). MOC is a voluntary, structured program in which physicians participate in education and activities related to recertification on an ongoing basis rather than every 10 years. Ninety-one percent of all active American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM)-certified family physicians eligible for the MOC program are participating, while 90% of internal medicine physicians are participating. This trend may be the result the public’s expectation that physicians stay current in their medical specialties and maintain certification. According to a study conducted by the ABMS, 45% of patients would look for a new doctor if they learned that theirs did not have current certification.
Read more here.
CMS eases credentialing and privileging by proxy for telemedicine providers
To the relief of many medical services professionals and credentialing coordinators, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid yesterday issued a telemedicine final rule that allows for credentialing and privileging by proxy, effective in 60 days after it publishes in the Federal Registry.
Under the revised Conditions of Participation (CoP) for hospitals and critical access hospitals, the originating site (the hospital where the patient is) can make credentialing and privileging decisions about telemedicine providers (practitioners who provide clinical services by electronic communication) using information from the distant site (the remote site where the telemedicine practitioner is located).
Free forms: CRC contest roundup
Thanks to all the readers who submitted their tools and tips for contest for free admission to the Credentialing Resource Center Symposium, May 12–13 in Las Vegas! The contest is now closed.
We’ve selected the best and posted them online for you to borrow these great resources and customize for your own organization.
Congratulations to the winners who will be joining us in Las Vegas on May 12–13:
- Contest February winner: Physician improvement policy (Karen Vineyard, CPMSM, Lapeer Regional Medical Center)
- Contest March winner: MEC orientation (Linda Van Winkle, CPMSM, CPCS, Christus St. Patrick Hospital)
- Contest April winner: New practitioner task checklist (Kathy J. Szary, Grinnell Regional Medical Center)
Contest winner: New practitioner task checklist
Congratulations to Kathy J. Szary, medical staff services coordinator and executive assistant at Grinnell (IA) Regional Medical Center! Kathy is the final winner for the 2011 Credentialing Resource Center Symposium Contest!
Kathy submitted this novel new practitioner task checklist. She writes,
We developed this form recently to help us in preparing for the arrival of new practitioners. We established a “new practitioner task force,” which I keep as a distribution list.
