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The MSO's partnership with the quality department

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, July 19, 2007

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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:

In January of 2007, I kicked-off the year by attending the National Association Medical Staff Services (NAMSS) Leadership Retreat in San Antonio. It was a very rewarding and worthwhile experience that provided the opportunity to chat with NAMSS leaders from all over the country and hear what's on their mind from a both a leadership and a professional perspective.

A group of us were networking and briefly discussing the Joint Commission 2007 standards. We mentioned (understatement) the importance of collaboration between the quality department and the medical staff office as the focus increases on using evidence-based data to determine physician competency, both for the initial applicant and when regranting privileges.

Christina McGrew, CPMSM, CPCS, President of the Nevada Association Medical Staff Services (NvAMSS) enthusiastically stated that in recognizing the importance of this partnership, her quality director was invited to present to the Nevada association. Her quality director began her introduction by stating to the medical service professionals, "Meet your new best friend."

I followed up with Christina and asked her if she'd like to comment on lessons learned and the benefits of a healthy relationship between the two departments. Thank you, Christina, for the following comments:

"Our acknowledgement of the importance of a relationship between medical staff and quality has continued to grow, both at our individual facility and throughout our Las Vegas Valley community. 

As our department strives to provide the most comprehensive information to medical staff leadership to support credentialing actions, we continually look for the most effective and efficient ways to obtain and compile essential competency information to support credentialing actions. Through jointly developed processes, our medical staff and quality departments have found ways to create 'double duty' reports and methods of reformatting information so that it can used to satisfy both of our needs or requirements.  In our quest for privilege-specific competence information, we have also reached out to our HIM colleagues to help compile and extract data from our clinical data system.

As a state association, our CME focus for 2007 has been on privileging, competency, and Joint Commission standards. We found that our formal and informal member discussions consistently included questions about obtaining and using quality measures and performance improvement data. In response to our members' needs, we reached out to our quality colleagues and decided to coordinate and host an opportunity for medical staff and quality professionals to meet and discuss the significant revisions to The Joint Commission's credentialing and privileging standards and to discuss evolving partnerships and the challenges of obtaining and utilizing physician data. As the state president, I had the recent honor of hosting the first joint meeting of the Nevada Association of Medical Staff Services (NvAMSS) and the Nevada Association for Healthcare Quality (NvAHQ) to a joint association meeting to discuss how to collaboratively address the Joint Commission standards and the 'Six Areas of General Competencies.' The open forum was a huge success and our two organizations have opted to meet again jointly in the fall."

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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