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Six Competencies for MSPs

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, January 24, 2008

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Sally J. Pelletier, CPMSM, CPCS, is a consultant with The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc., specializing in the areas of credentialing and privileging.

Dear credentialing colleague:

Welcome to 2008, as Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) accredited hospitals enter the brave new world of conducting required focused professional practice evaluations (FPPE). These evaluations are for practitioners requesting privileges who do not have documented evidence of competency at the organization where they are requesting the particular privilege and/or procedure.

By now, everyone involved in credentialing, privileging, and competency determination at your organization should be familiar with the six areas of general competencies that were developed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) as a result of their Outcome Project in 1999.  The Joint Commission adapted these six competencies in 2007 for use in assessing the proficiency of privileged practitioners. Its rationale is to develop a more comprehensive evaluation model for a practitioner's performance by better defining what elements make up a "good doc". Organizations will then continuously monitor each area of general competency with the goal of confirming the competency of each practitioner to perform specific clinical privileges.

The six areas of general competencies for physicians are:

• Patient Care
• Medical / Clinical Knowledge
•  Practice Based Learning and Improvement
•  Interpersonal and Communication Skills
•  Professionalism
•  Systems-based Practice

One of the goals of The Greeley Company in 2008 is to define the essential elements of a truly effective medical staff office. You can expect some exciting developments in 2008 as The Greeley Company answers the question, "What would a high functioning medical staff office look like if it 'hit a home run' by fulfilling its mission?" Because the role of the MSP is instrumental to an effective medical staff office, we also asked ourselves if the six areas of general competencies for physicians could be a starting point for establishing general competencies for the leadership skills needed by MSPs. Our conclusion is: Yes, they absolutely could be adapted as applicable. Perhaps they would be along these lines:

• Managerial expertise
• Knowledge
• Practice based learning and performance improvement (PI)
• Interpersonal and communication skills
• Professionalism
• Systems based skills (Organization)

MSPs aren't granted clinical privileges but they do perform many different functions which need to be measured through an appropriate competency assessment process.  These six areas provide one structure for communicating expectations.  The next step is to define the elements within each of the six areas so that they may be suitably measured.

These are both exciting and challenging times for medical staff office personnel.  As Steve Farber, the keynote speaker at the NAMSS annual conference last year, indicated there are no boxes within which we have to limit ourselves.

Remember, credentialing has no other master than the patient.

That's all for this week.

All the best,

Sally J. Pelletier, CPMSM, CPCS
http://www.greeley.com/consulting.cfm

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