Anne Roberts, CPMSM, CPCS, is the director of medical affairs at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, where she oversees the medical administration, graduate medical education, and medical staff services departments.

Dear credentialing colleague:

As MSPs’ roles continue to expand, I am frequently asked to clarify the requirements for non-employees versus employees that provide services or participate in training at an organization. Let’s first start with The Joint Commission’s (formerly JCAHO) definition of “staff.” In the Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals (CAMH), The Joint Commission defines staff in the following way: “As appropriate to their roles and responsibilities, all people who provide care, treatment, and services in the hospital, including those receiving pay (e.g., permanent, temporary, and part-time personnel, as well as contract employees), volunteers and health profession students. The definition of staff does not include licensed independent practitioners (LIPs) who are not paid staff or who are not contract employees.”

Since 2004, total disciplinary actions for physicians have dropped 15%, according to an April report by the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB). Some medical board executives say that effective rehabilitation and education programs are the reasons for decreased disciplinary actions, according to a May 12 American Medical News article.

Physician performance feedback is not merely an issue of establishing procedures or working out the technicalities of measurement. Rather, it is a fundamental issue of medical staff and organizational culture. Physician competency feedback reports are effective only when physicians adopt a culture that both accepts the validity of such reports and acts on them. Physician leaders must support the implementation of effective data collection systems and secure medical staff buy-in.

Eliminate the hassles of finding the right offices for primary source verification. The Credentialing and Privileging Desktop Reference (CPDR) is an online directory created for credentialing professionals. Designed to put all the verification information you need within the click of a mouse, with CPDR you can quickly and easily search verification sources (e.g., hospitals, medical and nursing schools), standards and regulations, forms, tools, Web resources, and more. It is not a static reference; it is a regularly updated, interactive, living resource for your credentialing and privileging needs.