News and briefs: CMS final rule opens up medical staff, privileges to non-physicians

CMS issued a final rule last week encouraging hospitals to allow non-physician practitioners to apply for medical staff membership and clinical privileges “in alignment with their professional education and training to the full extent allowed under State licensing and scope-of-practice laws.” This means hospitals can extend medical staff membership to physician assistants, advanced practice registered nurses, and any other category of practitioner deemed eligible by the organization.

Along with the medical staff final rule, CMS issued other final rules all aimed at an initiative announced by President Barack Obama to reduce unnecessary or burdensome regulations and reduce healthcare costs by $5 billion over the next five years.

“We believe the greater the flexibility that hospitals, medical staffs, and individual physicians have to enlist the services of non-physician practitioners to carry out the patient care duties for which they are trained and licensed, the better the quality of care will be for patients,” CMS states in the final rule.

CMS encourages expanding clinical roles to allow physicians and non-physicians to work in interdisciplinary teams and to free up physicians’ time to focus on difficult health issues. However, CMS also states affirmatively that physicians must be the leaders in patient care delivery.

CMS also expanded its rule regarding medical staff leadership. Podiatrists can now assume direct leadership of the medical staff. In its final rule, CMS stated that podiatrists have the “education, training, and experience that makes them qualified to hold such a leadership position.”  

The final rule also allows for a health system to have one governing body, instead of a separate governing body at each of its hospitals. However, CMS stated it would not make it a Conditions of Participation for systems to have only one governing board because it believes that some organizations run better with multiple governing boards.

“Because we have not seen sufficient evidence presented that would indicate that one model works more effectively than another, we do not believe that it would be appropriate for CMS to endorse one model of hospital governance over another.”

To read more of the revised final rules, click here.