Principles every credentials committee member should know
The credentials committee plays a critical role in the hospital, medical staff, and quality patient care. Yet medical staffs often assign members who lack adequate training to serve on the credentials committee. The Credentials Committee Essential Handbook clarifies the critical role of the credential committee member and their responsibilities in relation to the medical executive committee, the quality committee, and department chairs. Authors by Richard A. Sheff, MD, and Robert J. Marder, MD, share principles every member of a credentials committee should know. The following is one of those principles:
Credentialing Principle: No One Works Without a Ticket
Nobody works without a ticket. If a physician or an allied health professional (AHP) wants to provide inpatient care, that practitioner must be authorized to do so. Authorization can be carried out in one of three ways:
1. Medical staff privileges with quality monitoring through the medical staff. Practitioners are granted privileges for a scope of services, and the medical staff is responsible for ensuring that each practitioner does a good job.
2. Job description with supervision and annual performance evaluation. Employees of the hospital have job descriptions, and a manager supervises and evaluates their performance.
3. Contract with scope-of-service agreement. The hospital could have a contract with a scope of services agreement that defines what a practitioner or entity can do under that agreement and how performance will be monitored.
The idea of a ticket is to provide everyone who works in the hospital with a scope of responsibility, a clear chain of accountability, and ongoing quality monitoring.