Credentialing Resource Center Connection

Calling all medical staff professionals and medical staff leaders: Have you mastered your organization’s OPPE process? Do you have a solid medical staff leader orientation process to ensure new members have the tools they need to tackle the challenges they will face? If so, we want to hear from you!

In this week's column, Emily Berry, associate editor, discusses the annual challenge MSPs face responding to prepublications standards.

If your organization requires documentation of tuberculosis or other immunizations, MSPs should also have a method for tracking their expiration dates. Your organization should determine whether it wants to extend a grace period for practitioners to submit the documentation as well as what documentation is acceptable (e.g., skin test results, x-ray interpretations, a letter from the practitioner’s primary care physician, a health questionnaire, etc.). MSPs should also implement a reminder, suspension, and reinstatement process.

Some facilities prohibit healthcare professionals from joining their medical staffs if they were convicted of certain crimes, such as crimes against persons, crimes related to moral turpitude (one example of this may be inappropriate sexual relations with a patient), and crimes related to narcotics or controlled substances. However, most experts caution against this inflexible approach. Instead, they recommend that hospitals consider the information in light of how it relates to maintaining patient safety and protecting the reputation of the hospital and its medical staff. Your medical staff’s policies about processing criminal background checks should be contained in the bylaws.