News roundup November 30-December 4

As part of our initiative to highlight the efforts of MSPs everywhere, the Credentialing Resource Center Team is recognizing all-star MSPs in the community by featuring them in Credentialing Resource Center Digest. In our latest feature, we would like to recognize Ann Bottom. Bottom is a credentialing systems specialist at Ephraim McDowell Health in Danville, Kentucky with more than seven years of experience in medical staff services.

A study of Press Ganey surveys found that patients gave higher scores to their physicians if they shared the same race/ethnicity. Eighty-eight percent of physicians received the maximum rating on the patient experience survey from patients of the same race/ethnicity. This was compared to 82% receiving the maximum rating from patients of a different race/ethnicity.

When faced with a negligent credentialing claim, two priorities are paramount regarding documents in the hospital’s or healthcare entity’s possession. Take steps to ensure that information does not go missing. In most organizations, a risk manager will place the relevant credentials file in a separate locked location while litigation is pending or ongoing.

Historically, quality and peer review processes have been developed separately and lived in siloed departments. Yet, oftentimes, the quality department and medical staff services department are doing the same work related to peer review and quality improvement. In his recent webinar, "The Intersection of Quality and Peer Review" speaker Mark A. Smith, MD, MBA, FACS, explored how to realign these departments to minimize duplicative work while also ensuring your peer review processes remain effective, efficient, and unbiased. The following is the Q&A from that webinar.

CRC members can peruse all of the online articles from the November 2020 issues of CRCJ and MSB—as well as full-color PDFs—here:

To access the relevant full-issue PDF, select "DOWNLOAD FULL ISSUE" at the top of the page.