Tip: Sell core privileges to physician leaders

Converting to core privileging is a time-consuming and complex endeavor that is well worth the effort. But how do you convince everyone else? If your experience has been like many physician leaders, mentioning a change to the credentialing/privileging process garners a multitude of reactions. MSPs are usually extremely supportive and the medical staff ranges from overtly hostile to agnostic, while administration and board of trustee members have a “deer in the headlights” look—although the chief financial officer always wants to know what it is going to cost.

To bring these diverse stakeholders around to your cause, start by enumerating the distinct advantages of core privileging:

• Simplifies the delineation process
• Is inherently criteria-based
• Adapts well to large and small medical staffs
• Decreases misunderstanding among applicants
• Reduces focus on seldom-used privileges
• Is flexible for changing clinical practices
• Is more efficient to administer and maintain

Overall, core privileging is a more streamlined, criteria-based system that works the way a physician or department chair’s mind would work when looking at a list of privileges, broken down into appropriate categories. Once physician leaders have been educated about credentialing/privileging and have seen a core privileging system in action, they realize the many advantages of it.

Source: Criteria-Based Core Privileging: A Guide to Implementation and Maintenance