Privileging and credentialing for interventional cardiology procedures

Abstract

Local institutional-specific credentialing and privileging for procedures is an important process for ensuring the quality of care provided by interventional cardiologists. Recently revised standards for coronary intervention and the blossoming of structural heart disease programs have generated controversy over these processes. How standards are set for credentialing and privileging is poorly understood by most interventional cardiologists, including those responsible for credentialing and privileging. Requirements from The Joint Commission dictate how credentialing and privileging is performed at hospitals they accredit. Physicians must be recredentialed every 2 years at each hospital, with privileges renewed at that time. Hospitals must review quality of physicians even more frequently using Ongoing Professional Practice Evaluations. Hospitals must also evaluate the performance of physicians when they join a hospital staff or when they begin performing new procedures using Focused Professional Practice Evaluations. Cardiology department directors and catheterization laboratory directors are responsible for recredentialing and reprivileging members of their departments. Individual physicians are responsible for cooperating with these processes, and for periodic recertification with specialty boards and governmental agencies. We provide specific guidance to help physicians navigate these processes.

SCAI expert consensus statement: 2016 best practices in the cardiac catheterization laboratory: (Endorsed by the cardiological society of india, and sociedad Latino Americana de Cardiologia intervencionista; Affirmation of value by the Canadian Association of interventional cardiology–Association canadienne de cardiologie d'intervention)*

“…TJC requires the completion of ongoing professional practice evaluations (OPPE) more often than annually on all physicians. TJC also mandates completion of a focused professional practice evaluation (FPPE) for newly hired operators, established operators requesting permission to perform a new procedure, and established operators performing a procedure in case of a perceived problem [3]. Case volume should be documented by the CCL director on a biannual basis.…”

Morbidity and Mortality Conference for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention

“…M&M conference is a common form of peer review used by percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) programs and a potential method of accomplishing continuous quality improvement, ongoing professional practice evaluation, and case review. [1][2][3][4][5] Although the modern M&M conference dates from the mid-20th century and is familiar to most clinicians, 6 there is little consensus on strategies for effective case selection and review. 7 Previous description of M&M conference in the catheterization laboratory is limited to a single case report.…”

‘Fit-for-purpose?’ – challenges and opportunities for applications of blockchain technology in the future of healthcare

“…Processes for the management of healthcare workforce competencies, including degree verification, credentialing, and continuing education, are largely based on legacy systems that can suffer from inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and avoidable costs [42, 43]. These challenges are further exacerbated by bad actors, as highlighted by a survey of hiring managers ( n = 2532) that found 28% of observed job candidates claiming unearned academic credentials [44]; this occurs across sectors, including high profile cases like a nationally known US college football coach resigning days after his hire after it was unearthed that he had falsified a master’s degree in education [45].…”