News roundup July 6-July 10

A recent poll on our Medical Staff & Credentialing Professionals LinkedIn page shows that MSPs have been affected financially at work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to respondents, their medical staff offices have experienced:

One respondent commented that her medical staff office has experienced both furloughs and salary reductions.

Want to engage with your medical staff services colleagues on LinkedIn? Join our Medical Staff & Credentialing Professionals group by clicking here.

Have an all-star MSP on your team? We want to know! Email CRC editor Karla Accorto at kaccorto@hcpro.com with their name, organization, email address, and a few sentences about what makes them such a great MSP and team member. Your nominated MSP could be featured in an upcoming issue of our Credentialing Resource Center Digest! To see our latest MSP shout-out, click here.

If the burden of medical staff leadership was shared equally by all medical staff members, each member would spend a reasonable amount of time on their leadership duties. As a result, medical staff members would be less likely to consider these duties an additional burden worthy of monetary compensation. But the reality is that a handful of the members do the bulk of the work while the remaining wouldn’t touch leadership responsibilities with a 10-foot pole.

According to a new survey from the Larry A. Green Center and Primary Care Collaborative, many primary care practitioners are experiencing record-high burnout in the midst of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This burnout stems largely from financial pressures resulting from the pandemic.

MSPs often struggle to receive information—including elements of medical staff applications—in a timely manner. Although the responsibility for providing the required information lies with the practitioner, there are certain things MSPs can do to be proactive.

Credentialing exists to protect patients, healthcare organizations, and healthcare providers. Thus, one of the most important functions of the medical executive committee (MEC) is vigilant oversight of the credentialing and privileging processes. If MEC members do this poorly, they will most likely make their lives miserable, as well as the lives of many other physicians. This article will explain and explore this vitally important function.

It is important to have a crystal-clear definition of investigation in your bylaws. A failure to do so could have serious implications for your organization in reporting to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB). You may hear the term bright line applied to the definition of investigation. That means that the bylaws spell out clearly when a line has been crossed and an investigation has begun.