Consistency is maintained because all physicians in a clinical area are asked to meet the same minimum threshold criteria covering education, training, and experience. The same is true for practitioners from different clinical areas who request privileges to treat the same conditions or perform the same procedures. Consistency is also a large part of risk management, because consistent criteria help to minimize the risk of corporate liability by ensuring that only practitioners with the proper education, training, and experience perform certain procedures and treat specific conditions. This system is also flexible. When the Credentialing Resource Center's system is in use and a hospital needs to develop core criteria for a new clinical area or technology, the format for those criteria is already in place, ready to be followed.
Productivity increases since much of the initial research can be done by nonclinicians.
But the system's best advantage is that it defines minimum threshold criteria, and those physicians who do not meet the predefined criteria for core privileges or special requests are not eligible to apply. The Credentialing Resource Center suggests credentials committees use the information in the Clinical Privilege White Papers to develop a customized Privilege Request Form. This form would be given to each applicant requesting privileges in a clinical area. In addition, each special request would have its own Privilege Request Form. The Privilege Request Form outlines the minimum threshold criteria needed to apply for privileges to perform core procedures and treat core conditions.