Credentialing is a necessary and critical process in the healthcare industry, ensuring that healthcare providers are qualified to treat patients. However, the process can be time-consuming and prone to errors due to its complexity. These mistakes can cause significant problems for both the healthcare facility and the provider, with consequences ranging from delayed payments to fines and legal action. It's essential to identify and avoid these mistakes to streamline the credentialing process and ensure patients receive quality care. In this article, we'll discuss the most common credentialing mistakes and ways to troubleshoot and avoid them. So that you could successfully navigate the medical credentialing process and ensure compliance with regulatory standards.

The High Stakes of Credentialing: Meaning of Mistakes

The healthcare industry faces a unique set of challenges and expectations, with high-quality data accuracy and precision being of utmost importance. Consistently delivering top-notch healthcare is the minimum expectation, leaving no room for errors in diagnosis or treatment and no tolerance for unjustifiable healthcare costs. Given these stringent criteria, credentialing is essential for ensuring the delivery of affordable quality healthcare.

Learn about the credentialing meaning and role: Unveiling the Importance for Medical Professionals

The Criticality of Medical Credentialing for Maintaining Patient Safety and Avoiding Lawsuits

When healthcare providers are credentialed, patients can trust that they are in expert hands and receive the highest level of care. Medical facilities can also have confidence that their staff can provide world-class healthcare. As a result, medical practitioners and hospital chains can serve a broader range of patients from various networks.

By properly credentialing their staff, medical centers can minimize the risk of lawsuits or malpractice investigations. Insurance companies that collaborate with competent medical professionals can provide their customers with standardized healthcare. Insurers can also guarantee the quality of healthcare and treatment costs for their customers, allowing them to price insurance policies accordingly.

Medical centers, regardless of whether they provide invasive or non-invasive treatments, must be credentialed. The conditions for credentialing vary based on the type of procedure, its criticality, the number of people involved, the knowledge required, and several other factors.

Every medical practitioner involved in the healthcare delivery process must be credentialed with an insurance provider. Physical therapists, mental health providers, physician assistants, optometrists, dentists, nurse practitioners, podiatrists, and other healthcare providers fall into this category.

Learn more about Provider Enrollment & Credentialing Timeframes

Ensuring Smooth Credentialing: Mistakes to Watch Out For

Any medical facility and all telemedicine services, would it be a study clinic, lab, diagnostic center, ambulance, clinic, hospital, and surgery center, must undergo credentialing with an insurer or multiple insurers. Given the extent and scale of this process, mistakes often occur.

Planning and Timing Mistakes

Credentialing is a time-consuming process that involves processing and verifying large amounts of data. The procedure can take 3 to 4 months or more, depending on the intricacy of healthcare delivery, and more data and information may be required.

The collection and preparation of data can be a lengthy process. Gathering the required documents for the application may require multiple rounds of communication, making the timeline for credentialing uncertain. Particularly if medical professionals are not using healthcare automation, manual credentialing can result in a significant amount of paperwork. Processing this paperwork can present unique challenges:

• finding qualified resources to pre-verify the paperwork,
• obtaining signatures on relevant documents,
• securing verification stamps and seals from the appropriate medical regulatory authorities.

Credentialing delays can stall operations, making it essential to complete the process and re-credential well ahead of the due date.

One common error that medical facilities and staff make is underestimating the time required for credentialing. If there are no changes in medical practice, re-credentialing may be quick. However, if there were any modifications, such as the introduction of new healthcare therapy, re-credentialing may take longer.

A simple change in surgical equipment, an update to newer medical technology, or a shift in a medical practitioner's set of skills could result in the need for credentialing. Credentialing might become complicated because of the extensive degree of interconnection of these services.

An operating room that employs a variety of laboratory apparatus, scientific devices, and surgical supplies for various types of surgeries may necessitate a certain level of competence and experience. Credentialing may be required for medical practitioners such as surgeons, anesthesiologists, lab technicians, duty nurses, and even lab attendants.

The broad scope of healthcare delivery, continual innovation, and the growing competence areas of health professionals all contribute to the development of new kinds of credentialing. Medical practitioners are not permitted to practice medicine unless they are accredited. This loss of time can have an impact on both healthcare providers and the patients who rely on them.

Mistakes in Data Entry

Data accuracy is crucial when applying for credentialing. Failing to provide complete and accurate details can lead to an application being rejected. A rejected application might require even more documentation to initiate a new credentialing request, which can cause delays for medical practitioners trying to resume their services.

Type errors

• Interchanged information
• Wrong information
• Misspelled names
• Wrong addresses
• Incorrect credentials

To avoid these errors, it's essential to double-check your application after entering the information. Medical facilities may overlook this step due to manual processes, inexperience in credentialing, or lack of proper training for their medical staff.

Missing information

Missing information is another issue that can arise due to the complexity of the credentialing process. This can be caused by:

• Lack of information
• Negligence
• Overlooking important aspects
• Lack of expertise in filling out the application
• Lack of healthcare automation

Medical credentialing may not be a straightforward process, and there could be several twists and turns in the process. Because of the complexity involved, there could be a strong chance of missing critical information.

Improper documentation

Improper documentation is another common mistake, especially in manual processes involving paper documents. This can include missing or ambiguous information. Many healthcare businesses continue to rely on antiquated, error-prone processes rather than comprehensive, autonomous healthcare solutions. This reluctance to change can have far-reaching consequences, such as contract cancellations between insurers and healthcare providers or being delisted by insurers.

With the fierce rivalry in the insurance industry, insurers are growing increasingly dubious about healthcare quality. Their decision-making process has been mechanized. If a healthcare practitioner makes a low-tolerance error, the provider is abruptly delisted. Proper documentation must be provided to avert such potential problems. One method for ensuring accurate documentation compilation and uploading is to use an automation solution.

Application Process Mistakes

Application process mistakes, such as omitting, misrepresenting, or unknowingly entering incorrect information, can put a healthcare facility's reputation and financial stability at risk. These seemingly minor errors can lead to significant problems, including patient care services issues. The most crucial part of the provider credentialing process is the application. If there are errors in it, the application can be outright rejected, potentially damaging the healthcare provider's relationship with the insurer.

Healthcare Professionals' Compliance Errors

Compliance errors in credentialing can put medical facilities at risk for negligence and a lack of professionalism. To avoid these issues, it's essential to pay close attention to the following areas:

Not Knowing the Candidate

Before starting a medical practice, a medical practitioner undergoes an initial screening at a medical facility. The medical facility then proceeds to align the practitioner with a contract. However, the medical facility's credentialing department must have complete information about the candidate they are trying to credential. This helps to minimize the risks associated with transactional, reputational, operational, and compliance issues.

Both the candidates and the credentialing department should be aware of what to expect during the provider credentialing process. This includes the necessary checks, verifications, and required documentation.

Furnishing Documents That Are Already Given

Providing documents that have already been submitted or requesting documents that have already been collected can lead to delays and a loss of trust in the medical establishment's credentialing processes.

To address this, it is critical to keep control of all documents acquired, dispersed, and confirmed. Implementing intelligent automation can help streamline this process.

Unclear Documentation Requirements

Healthcare organizations often house a diverse range of regulated practitioners, each adhering to their own standardized methodologies, levels of competence, and codes of conduct. Consequently, the provider credentialing and re-credentialing processes can become quite overwhelming due to the numerous documentation requirements. Without proper systems in place, manual credentialing departments may struggle to manage all this data efficiently.

Numerous regulatory authorities oversee approximately thirty-two professions, including common ones such as nurses, doctors, pharmacists, dentists, osteopaths, and opticians. These professionals need to continuously validate their credentials, either periodically or whenever they acquire new skills or specializations.

Healthcare regulators, like the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), have established employment-checking standards and framework regulations. Each of these comes with its own set of stringent requirements. Consequently, managing the multiple regulators, standards, and documentation requirements becomes a daunting task. Without automation, the chances of errors significantly increase.

Even when compliance managers possess a clear understanding of regulatory obligations, frameworks, and up-to-date standards, keeping track of the numerous documentation requirements remains a challenge. Moreover, since these requirements can change over time, manual tracking is simply not a sustainable solution.

Documents Expiring

Even after a candidate or medical practitioner starts their duty after credentialing, the compliance department still has a role to play. Documents provided during the provider credentialing process often have expiry dates, and manually tracking these dates is not scalable.

Numerous healthcare organizations' credentialing divisions have difficulty keeping up with compliance processes after the initiation stage. The inability to recertify documents can jeopardize patient care, endanger many people, and incur administrative costs.

One solution to this problem is ongoing training for compliance and credentialing departments. However, training alone isn't enough. An automated solution that reduces human intervention and integrates an expiry date checking system that sends reminders and follows up with practitioners is necessary. This type of automation ensures the smooth functioning of the healthcare value chain.

Healthcare Providers' Enrolling Process Mistakes

Enrollment and provider credentialing are related processes that usually occur together, with one process logically following the other. Once the provider enrollment application is submitted, medical credentialing documents are provided, and the credentials are then verified. Upon successful verification, the practice is considered valid and accepted, and a contract is established.

However, when an insurance company delays or refuses medical practitioners due to enrollment process mistakes, it can negatively impact their financial resources. For example, if affiliation information is incorrect during the provider enrollment and credentialing process, the payer might delay credentialing. If a medical provider has not provided complete information about any adverse medical or clinical occurrences from their practice, this could lead to a delay or outright refusal of payment from the provider.

State-Specific Medical Credentialing Requirements

Credentialing differs depending on the state, healthcare industry, specialists, and other factors. Because of these unknowns, automation can assist medical centers in avoiding credentialing errors. Medical credentialing varies by state, and some states have reciprocity legislation. These policies allow healthcare providers to start practicing in multiple states without having to relicense or retrain.

Learn more about the eNLC and IMLC

Let’s take a look at some of the examples:

• Chiropractors must have passed NBCE exams in all states and have a Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) accreditation. While this law is applied to all states, some professionals, such as naturopathic physicians, may not be subject to them. Only a handful of states may license such professionals, requiring an accredited 4-year degree from a naturopathic medical school and passing certain postdoctoral board assessments.
• Massage therapists' requirements can vary greatly. Enrollment, credentialing, or license requirements may vary by state. Some states may require at least 500 hours of hands-on practice, whereas others might have higher standards.

The bottom line is that credentialing requirements are not the same for all medical practices. Every practice has its own set of evolving requirements, including educational details and exams to pass. Tracking all these requirements without automation can be challenging.

The Real Cost of Medical Credentialing Mistakes: Are You Prepared to Pay?

The real cost of provider credentialing mistakes can be steep. Health insurance companies may classify a simple error as malpractice, and once this status is assigned, it can be challenging to remove. Resolving this issue could involve providing more documentation, supporting evidence, legal documents, and more. The delays caused by these mistakes can be extremely frustrating for medical practitioners.

Furthermore, an insurance company may classify the error as negligent credentialing. Insurers use a variety of mechanisms to categorize credentialing errors, frequently for internal comparison purposes. The degree to which insurance providers rely on these categories to endorse or disallow medical practice is determined by the insurance company, the country in which it operates, and the kind of medical practice.

Discover Why Accurate Provider Data is the Key to Stellar Healthcare & Compliance

Troubleshooting Provider Credentialing Mistakes: A Proactive Approach

Addressing credentialing mistakes can be costly and time-consuming, so the best approach is to prevent them from occurring in the first place. Using automation is a key way to achieve this. Prevention is truly the best solution for credentialing issues.

Many credentialing mistakes can be avoided. For example, outdated contact information, which is responsible for more than 85% of rejected applications, may seem like a minor mistake, but it can stall the entire credentialing process.

Staff Retraining

One way a healthcare facility addresses credentialing mistakes is by retraining its medical staff, ensuring accuracy, patience, and attention to detail when troubleshooting. This process involves therapists, nurses, physician assistants, and doctors participating in the correction of errors.

Reactive Troubleshooting

Another approach is reactive troubleshooting, which involves re-verifying all records to prevent potential negligence issues. However, this method is labor-intensive and not proactive, and because it is not automated, it leaves room for manual errors. Staff must also be retrained on critical aspects like differences in state compliance policies.

Discover more Tips for Provider Data Maintenance

The Best Way to Troubleshoot Medical Credentialing Mistakes

So, how can you make the application process more accurate and error-free? Verifying credentialing information before submitting it as part of the application is one option, but this can be cumbersome, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. As a result, it creates unnecessary administrative overheads.

Once again, the best form of troubleshooting is to prevent it, and using automation is one of the ways to do it.

The optimal solution is to automate the application process. With artificial intelligence and machine learning, data can be pre-populated within the application. Customized solutions can be designed to address the specific needs of healthcare organizations, their departments, and individual medical practitioners.

By using an automated platform, manual errors are significantly reduced. Medical billing and credentialing software provide on-the-fly verification, suggestions, and auto-fills. When integrated with other systems, this software allows for the reuse of data, saving time and ensuring timely completion.

Introducing Credsy: Leverage Tech Solutions

Credsy simplifies the provider credentialing and enrollment processes by combining automation and expert compliance management. Our platform offers numerous benefits for healthcare providers and organizations, including:

1. Automated data handling and verification to minimize manual work and errors.
2. Regulatory compliance assurance through our expert team staying up-to-date with federal and state regulations.
3. A unified data hub for centralizing provider data across different states or organizations, ensuring consistency, accuracy, and up-to-date information.
4. Improved teamwork with secure messaging and document-sharing features for seamless communication among stakeholders.
5. Real-time tracking and automated document processing to minimize errors and inaccuracies, and lower the risk of non-compliance.

With Credsy, healthcare organizations can achieve greater efficiency and accuracy in managing their provider data, leading to better outcomes for providers, and leaving them more time to actually treat patients.

FAQ

Q: What is the purpose of credentialing in healthcare?

A: Provider credentialing is an essential process in healthcare to ensure that medical providers possess the necessary qualifications, education, training, and experience to deliver quality patient care. This process safeguards patients and maintains professional standards in the industry.

Q: Why are mistakes common in the healthcare credentialing process?

A: The healthcare credentialing process is complex, involving multiple documentation requirements, various stakeholders, and state-specific regulations. This complexity makes it more susceptible to errors, which can lead to delays, financial issues, and potential disciplinary actions.

Q: What are some typical healthcare credentialing errors?

A: Common provider credentialing mistakes in healthcare include compliance errors, enrollment process errors, unclear documentation requirements, expired documents, and state-specific credentialing requirement misunderstandings.

Q: How can a healthcare facility address credentialing mistakes?

A: Preventing credentialing mistakes is the best approach to troubleshooting. Automated solutions, such as Credsy, can help healthcare facilities streamline the credentialing process, reduce manual work and errors, and ensure compliance with relevant regulations.

Q: What benefits does an automated credentialing platform offer?

A: Credsy provides several advantages, including automated data handling and verification, regulatory compliance assurance, a centralized data hub for provider information, secure messaging and document-sharing features for improved collaboration, and real-time tracking and automated document processing to reduce errors and compliance risks.

Q: How does automation assist with state-specific healthcare credentialing requirements?

A: Automation helps healthcare facilities stay up-to-date with evolving requirements for different medical practices and state-specific regulations. This ensures that providers are credentialed according to each state's requirements, minimizing the risk of non-compliance.