Tips for sharing primary source verification documents with sister hospitals
Hospital mergers and acquisitions are occurring with greater frequency than ever, and the trend does not show signs of slowing. With many hospitals forming new partnerships or joining larger healthcare networks, medical staffs are facing the issue of granting privileges to practitioners from other hospitals within the same healthcare system.
The question becomes whether it is acceptable for medical staff services departments to share primary source verification (PSV) documents among sister hospitals. If each medical staff has different policies regarding this procedure, the entire process can quickly become complicated and result in unnecessary additional work for each medical staff within the network. Although sharing documents can reduce the amount of time medical staffs spend verifying credentials with primary sources, there are several considerations for medical staffs within a healthcare system before any documents are shared.
One of the first steps is for facilities within a system to determine whether to establish a centralized CVO, says Christina W. Giles, CPMSM, MS, president of Medical Staff Solutions in Nashua, N.H. If a system decides to establish a centralized CVO, the first step is to identify where the CVO will be located within the organization, both the physical location and where the CVO will report. Next, the entire organization must establish a fee structure so that each facility will contribute to covering the cost of the CVO's functions, says Giles.
Establishing a centralized CVO may not be possible for every healthcare system, however. Giles recommends that organizations identify how many practitioners the facilities will share.
"Even though it's a system, if the hospitals are all located in different locations or areas, they may not have a lot of common practitioners. That's just one of the many considerations," says Giles.
If many specialists and subspecialists will be rotating through multiple facilities within a system, it makes sense for hospitals to accept PSV documents from a centralized CVO, she explains.
When authorizing one facility to act as a CVO for an entire system, it is important for facilities to work with their legal counsels and sign an agreement stating that each facility can utilize the information obtained by the facility that verifies credentials, says Giles. "It's a legal issue, and it would obviously depend on what the state law says, but if there is a formal written agreement where one organization is authorizing another to act as its agent, it would be okay for them to share the documents," she says.
"You can actually have one form with multiple sets of criteria based on where the practitioner is asking to practice," Giles says. "It is still specific to the facility, but the format and the document itself could be redeveloped to look like a system document."
Source: Credentialing Resource Center Journal