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Ask the expert: Suspending sponsored AHPs, part II

Credentialing Resource Center Connection, August 30, 2007

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Last week's "Ask the expert" (What should my bylaws include about suspending sponsored allied health professional [AHP]?) advised readers that "When a physician loses privileges or resigns, the AHPs whom he or she has sponsored automatically loses their privileges."

However, one reader pointed out that she was told in a Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) survey that bylaws should provide AHPs with the opportunity for a fair hearing. Todd Sagin, MD, JD, a consultant with The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc. located in Marblehead, MA, addresses the point of confusion.

Sagin says that if an AHP's access to a hospital is contingent upon his or her working relationship with a medical staff physician (in other words, a sponsoring and/or supervising physician), then it is perfectly reasonable for the bylaws to indicate that privileges lapse if that relationship ceases. This concept is not unique to AHPs. For example, a physician frequently will have no right to a fair hearing if he or she loses the right to exercise privileges that become covered under an exclusive contract granted to another provider. Where the issue is one of clinical competence or professional behavior, then indeed the AHP must be offered a fair hearing, although it does not necessarily have to be the same due process offered physicians on the medical staff.

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