By Olivia Loeffler, network director, Medical Staff Services and credentials verification officer
For many years, the standard method of privileging was referred to as the “laundry list.” Hospitals would provide applicants with lengthy documents featuring the procedures that physicians and APPs within the same specialty or subspecialty were performing at the hospital. In some cases, applicants for privileges or Medical Staff membership would even receive a list containing hundreds of procedures performed by practitioners across the organization, not just those within the appropriate specialty or subspecialty.
A physician or APP applying for privileges would then select the ones they wished to perform. Because applicants were required to choose from a long list, hospitals often did not include minimum criteria for each privilege. This could make it difficult to consistently evaluate whether an individual had the appropriate training, experience and competency to perform a particular procedure.
Core privileges specifically define the training, experience and competency necessary for a physician or APP to apply for and maintain clinical privileges. The term “core privileges” refers to clinical activities within a specialty or subspecialty that an appropriately trained and actively practicing physician or APP with satisfactory references would be expected to be competent to perform.
With the core privileging approach, physicians and APPs who meet predefined criteria are eligible to apply for core privileges, while those who can document additional training and experience may request special or non-core privileges. Core privileging also helps hospitals meet DNV and The Joint Commission requirements for criteria-based privileging.
HonorHealth is moving toward a more standardized approach to clinical privileging that uses predefined criteria to help ensure physicians and APPs have the appropriate training, experience and competency for the privileges they seek. This approach is designed to promote greater consistency, transparency and efficiency in the privileging process while supporting high-quality patient care. HonorHealth will use CredentialStream to help streamline the request, review, recommendation, granting and ongoing management of clinical privileges.