Malpractice and Credentialing

Malpractice suits are every where these days. Personally, I believe that a good number of them are honest and unfortunate mistakes that a doctor makes. It's just hard when one small mistake by a doctor can make major repercussions. And don't get me started on the lawyer side of things...

But we also know that too many 'accidents' happen in a hospital because the physician doing the procedure really wasn't qualified to do it. This is where credentialing physicians becomes such an important thing.

Malpractice Statistics

I looked up some statistics on MedicalMalpractice.com and the numbers are pretty crazy.

• 98,000 patients may be killed each year from errors
• A California study found that 234,000 injuries and 80,000 deaths were caused by doctor negligence in 1988
• It is estimated that at least 1% of doctors should receive disciplinary action each year

Check out the site for more stats, it's really scary when you go over some of these numbers!

What Can Be Done?

So if there are all of these problems going on in hospitals, what can be done to make it better? Well, on thing that a lot of hospitals are starting to do is credential physicians to make sure they really are qualified to do what they are doing.

How Does Credentialing Physicians Help?

The idea behind credentialing is that not only do doctors and physicians have to have their degree, but they actually have to demonstrate their competency to a group of peers that will evaluate them to see if they really are qualified to do certain procedures. If they don't pass, they are not allowed to do that procedure in that hospital.

There is still a lot of work to be done in this area, but physician credentialing is a great start. As time goes on and methods improve, let's hope that the number of injuries and deaths from negligence goes down.

The Basics of Physician Credentialing

Have you even wondered what it takes for a doctor or physician to be able to actually do what they do? Sure, we all know that they go to school for a long time, but is that it? Do they just get a degree and then can do whatever they want? Not even close. Most hospitals have a credentialing process and if a doctor doesn't pass they don't get to perform a procedure!

The basic idea as far as I understand it is that a physician will get their training through medical school, but then the hospital they will take up residency in will still most likely want to watch their ability to perform to really decide what that physician will be allowed to do. So in the end physician credentialing is all about protecting a patient by not allowing a physician to perform something they aren't capable or qualified of performing.

Here's a great quote from TheFamilyMedicineDoctor.net that explains the basics of physician credentialing:

Credentialing physicians is the formal process of attestation and recognition of the current medical and technical competence as well as performance of a doctor by monitoring and evaluating his or her medical or clinical decision-making abilities. Furthermore, physician credentialing verifies medical education, certification, training, license, experience, malpractice, technical abilities, clinical judgment, and if any, adverse clinical occurrences through observation and investigation.

Most hospitals will have some sort of software in place at their hospitals to keep track of what each physician has the credentials to do. If they don't have the credentials, someone else will have to do it!

My guess is that the reason hospitals are doing this is to cut down on the number of malpractice suits that they get each year from mistakes that are made by incompetent physicians. By putting a credentials system in place they have a better chance of not running into lawsuit problems.

What are your thoughts on this? Personally, I think it's a really good thing that hospitals have this in a place. It basically assures you as a patient that the physician that's helping you has passed a basic competency test to be able to perform the procedure.