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Recognizing changes in healthcare that affect AHP credentialing, Part 1

Credentialing & Verification Update, October 10, 2007

MSPs continually identify the credentialing of allied health professionals (AHP) as one of their greatest challenges. While many healthcare organizations have dedicated resources to fine-tune their credentialing processes for physician members of the medical staff, they haven't dedicated the same energy toward similar processes for allied health disciplines. In fact, many institutions consider it a significant accomplishment if they simply have established a scope of care for an AHP discipline.

Typical stumbling blocks in this area include:

• The lack of a clear definition of an AHP
• The wide range of the clinical scopes of AHPs
• Varying and unclear AHP licensure requirements from state to state
• Lack of medical staff enthusiasm for credentialing and authorizing these practitioners to provide care
• Continuous changes in accreditation standards
• An increasing number of physicians employing AHPs for clinical assistance
• A lack of resources, both human and financial

To make matters even more confusing for healthcare professionals who are responsible for the credentialing function, The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) standards have included revisions regarding the credentialing of AHPs in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

However, The Joint Commission standard MS.1.20 provides guidelines on which to base the development of new credentialing methodologies to meet the needs of the organization, conform with best credentialing practices across this country, and comply with the applicable Joint Commission standards. Therefore, it is possible that a forward-thinking organization may look at the credentialing of AHPs not as a challenge but as an opportunity to redesign credentialing practices and determine new practices that will promote quality patient care through improved competency assessment of AHPs.

Before an organization can focus on credentialing AHPs who must be credentialed and privileging via the medical staff, it is essential to have a broad understanding of the issues related to the allied health disciplines. As a result, over the next several issues of CVU, we will discuss changes in healthcare that affect AHP credentialing.

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