Ask the expert: American College of Cardiology (ACOG) guidelines for credentialing

Recognize that the ACOG’s guidelines are just that: guidelines. They are not mandates, and your organization may find them very difficult to meet. Your organization may need to carefully deviate from those guidelines, taking into account your environment and what the volumes for a particular procedure will be. 

Your organization may choose to put a sunset on initial volume criteria to see if a guideline is working out, especially if you are starting a new cardiology service. Evaluate three or six months down the road to see if you have the numbers that you need. 

The other thing to consider is creating a limitation on the number of practitioners that might be eligible to perform certain procedures so that that group of practitioners can get sufficient experience. 

You always have to be able to defend your privileging criteria, but if there is thoughtful consideration given to the patients and protecting the institution and the medical staff is able to articulate why it set the criteria that they did, I think that you will be fine. You do not have to adopt a specialty society guideline.

This week’s question and answer are from the Webcast “Step-by-step guide to developing privilege criteria,” available on demand.