• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Determining competency of AHPs at reappraisal

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, April 21, 2004

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Credentialing Resource Center Connection!

Dear credentialing colleague:

When medical staffs and their assistants attempt to reassess the competency of certain AHPs -- such as PAs, nurses, surgical assistants, and others employed by physicians on staff -- they are often stymied by the lack of available information about the activities performed by these professionals and the absence of any meaningful quality review or improvement data.

Yet reappraisal and a re-grant of permission to provide service is necessary and in many cases required by external agencies. Nearly all credentials committees now recognize that permission cannot be extended to anyone without some evidence demonstrating that the healthcare professional's performance was acceptable. The question often asked is simple: "what evidence of performance should the credentials committee (or other authority) review for AHPs who do not provide care independently and without supervision?"

It is not acceptable for the hospital to re-grant privileges or otherwise reauthorize clinical activity without reviewing some performance appraisal. All credentials committees or human resource departments should take the following two steps:

1. Assemble any internally available information or data concerning the work/activities of these AHPs. (This would include incident reports, staff, visitor, patient or physician complaints, complements, litigation summaries, patient satisfaction information, etc.)

2. Require that the individual's employer complete a comprehensive performance evaluation similar in nature to those completed for hospital employees.

The information collected by taking these two steps should then permit the institution to determine whether the work of the AHP was acceptable and whether a re-grant of permission is warranted. (Under certain circumstances in which privileges are involved, a true peer recommendation may also be necessary even if obtained from an individual without direct knowledge of the caregiver.)

Try not to permit reappraisal of AHPs to become overly complicated.  Compile what information you have and require that the employer/sponsor complete a formal performance evaluation.

That's it for today.

All the best,

Hugh Greeley

http://www.greeley.com/seminars/

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Credentialing Resource Center Connection!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive