Credentialing: A Crucial Part of the Healthcare Conversation
Every healthcare organization ultimately is trying to provide high-quality patient care in a manner that is also profitable, and achieving that goal, in large part, comes down to efficiency, but manual, time-consuming processes can be a barrier. Credentialing software is intended to help organizations automate processes and increase their efficiency. KLAS’ recent Credentialing 2022 report looks at which vendors deliver on the promises of improved efficiency and which vendors are the best fit for specific types of organizations.
Credentialing Solutions Have Improved but Still Leave Room for Growth
As mentioned, credentialing can be a manual, time-consuming process. Without software to help automate their workflows, healthcare organizations must manually and continually check for certifications, approvals, and more while using a large number of tracking spreadsheets. Credentialing software solutions are used to automate a large portion of the process with tools that automatically scrape the internet for information. Ideally, these solutions should help organizations save time, money, and resources.
The COVID-19 pandemic created a strong push to reduce the turnaround time on credentialing processes to a fraction of what it was before. A report on credentialing that KLAS published in 2020 focused on the emergency credentialing that became an urgent and sudden need at the start of the pandemic.
Credentialing software enables a much quicker and easier workflow than was previously possible. However, the manual piece is yet to be completely eliminated, leaving lots of opportunities for development. KLAS’ current report focuses on the components of credentialing software that most impact efficiency and highlights which vendors are doing well in that regard.
Which Vendors Are Impacting Efficiency?
The 2022 credentialing report specifically examines three strong predictors of efficiency for credentialing solutions: (1) use of automations, (2) strong credentialing workflows, and (3) vendor partnership and guidance. All measured vendors have a number of customers who are highly satisfied due to taking advantage of the right automations and getting needed training and support. This chart from the report—mapping vendor impact on efficiency against the solution’s ability to drive tangible outcomes—shows that several vendors are performing well and positively impacting provider organizations’ efficiency. Many interviewed ASM customers are fully paperless. They credit this achievement largely to the solution's virtual committee capabilities, strong connections with outside databases, and electronic application tools. Modio Health’s system helps customers reduce tracking by paper and spreadsheets and strives to be the single source of truth. RLDatix provides both software and services to aid customers in their credentialing, and respondents note the benefits from the front-end automations. Read more about vendor performance by downloading the full report.
Customer Expectations for Efficiency on the Rise
Over the last several years, customer satisfaction with credentialing solutions hasn’t shifted dramatically, but what has changed are provider organizations’ expectations when it comes to efficiency from these solutions. And those expectations will only continue to increase.
Over the next few years, credentialing will continue to expand and become part of a larger operational ecosystem. When organizations don’t have properly credentialed staff or credentialing doesn’t happen in a timely manner, then the ability to deliver care, and thus patient outcomes and safety, is negatively impacted. As more connections are made between credentialing and other aspects of healthcare operations, provider organizations’ expectations for credentialing vendors will continue to rise. Currently, there are still many silos between healthcare departments and between different roles that prevent the conversations needed to vastly improve credentialing. The extent to which different groups are willing to partner in order to drive change will be either a barrier or a strength.
Conclusion
Credentialing needs to be a part of the discussion in every aspect of healthcare and will continue to grow in importance as elements of healthcare become more interconnected and complex. KLAS, vendors, and provider organizations will continue to have broad conversations about credentialing and its connections throughout healthcare. Read the 2022 report on the credentialing market for a more granular look into which vendors are taking steps toward greater efficiency in order to improve the quality of patient care and safety.
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