Credentialing & Privileging

To act or not to act on the Joint Commission’s 2010 prepublications standards

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, October 1, 2009

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Dear readers,

The Joint Commission posted its 2010 prepublication standards on its Web site last week (http://www.jointcommission.org/Standards/Pre-PublicationStandards/). The annual challenge MSPs face is how to respond to those standards. They’re not official, so surveyors can’t yet assess hospitals compliance with  them, but hospitals don’t want to wait too long before responding to the new standards because it will take time to implement some of them.
Here are some tips for managing prepublication standards.

Read the standards: Start by reviewing the medical staff standards and then do a CTRL + F key search for subjects which may affect your credentialing and privileging work. For example, telemedicine and disaster planning standards may not appear in the medical staff chapter, but it is a best practice for MSPs to familiarize themselves with those subjects as they may overlap with medical staff work.

Consider the impact on your medical staff services work if the prepublications standards became finalized: Many prepublication standards end up in the final set of standards. As such, it’s important for MSPs to consider what they will need to do to help implement those standards. Consider scheduling a meeting with medical staff leaders to let them know about the possible changes and how the new rules may impact their work, too.

Talk to your peers about the standards: Maybe someone else caught something important that you missed. Or perhaps another organization has a great idea for implementing a new and daunting standard. MSPs are great at networking with their peers to troubleshoot questions about the current standards, and navigating prepublication standards shouldn’t be different.

What are your tips for navigating prepublications standards? Email your thought to me at eberry@hcpro.com and I’ll post them on our Credentialing Resource Center blog. Please indicate in the email if you would like your comments posted anonymously or if I may print your name with them.

Sincerely,
Emily Berry
Associate Editor



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