No Credentials? No Access to Hospitals

CONFERENCE NEWS: MDMA ANNUAL MEETING

The vast majority of U.S. hospitals now have a credentialing program that medical device company personnel must go through if they want to be allowed inside, especially in procedural areas. Attendees at the MDMA annual meeting in May learned how they need to deal with this new reality.

The programs are an outgrowth of surprise inspections by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, said John Tara, director of corporate strategic marketing for Boston Scientific Corp. (Natick, MA). “[The commission wants] hospitals to have a documented process for keeping track of who is in their facilities,” he said.

Many hospitals reacted by taking their physician-credentialing program and applying it for vendor credentialing, he said. But this means vendors are being asked to fill out forms with irrelevant questions. And, he added, some hospitals have begun charging fees for credentialing.

The problem, Tara said, is that there are no national standards or policies on how to implement a vendor-credentialing program. This means device companies will be asked to do different things to get access to different hospitals—a process that will likely be extremely cumbersome to manage.

Previously, device companies had to provide a formal training letter, a vaccination record, and proof of liability insurance to get a representative access to a hospital. Now, said Tara, they may also be asked for any of the following documents as well:

The last item may be the most cumbersome, he said. “If you do not do background checks on your representatives, they may not be allowed in hospitals.” It is now crucial to have a centralized approach to dealing with credentialing, he concluded.

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