External Agency Reflection Paper

As the business manager for the section of General Internal Medicine it is my responsibility to ensure new providers are properly on boarded and credentialed to see patients on their first day of employment. If this process is not properly executed the physicians will be hired but unable to work until this process is complete. This process requires the business manager to communicate with all four entities (faculty services, Georgia Regents Medical Center, Veteran’s affairs and Medical Associates credentialing office. Each office has a separate and distinct set of timelines and requirements for the faculty member to become credentialed. The faculty member also needs to be highly involved with this process as they are required to complete
The physician is a graduate of a foreign medical school. To be credentialed at our institution the physician was required to obtain a degree equivalence verification to become credentialed. The degree equivalence verification is obtained by sending a credited external agency the faculty member’s transcripts. The external agency review the transcripts and deems the medical degree to be the equivalent of a United States based medical school degree. In order to be eligible for this evaluation the physician must complete a test prior to the evaluation. All of this is required to obtain their medical license required for credentialing. These tests are scheduled bi-monthly. To begin work on 7/1/2012 the physician should have completed their test by 11/1/2011, received their degree evaluation by 1/1/2012, and received their medical license by 4/1/2012 to allow time for the credential
From a departmental stand point a interim manager with the knowledge needed to onboard physicians should have been placed in this role. If this was not possible my manager should have been more engaged in the needs of the section during the time leadership was not available. My manager could have asked the previous manager to leave notes for this process. I was able to easily document this process during my time as a business manager and most of the work needed was actually completed by my assistant. From an institutional stand point we have a need to create a more central approach to credentialing. We have too much turnover for the process to become efficient. The requests are also redundant and a central department could make this process