WASHINGTON, D.C.- For the first time, 11 major health care organizations have worked together to develop a uniform national standard to credential clinical health care industry representatives (Clinical HCIRs) in an effort to ensure patient safety, privacy, high-quality and efficient care and access to advanced medical technologies.

Vendor credentialing is the setting of requirements and procedures by hospitals and others to allow industry representatives to enter an institution. Clinical HCIRs include industry professionals who provide technical support related to procedures ranging from knee replacements to programming cardiac pacemakers.

Currently, HCIRs face varying facility-specific credentialing requirements, which are compounded by redundancies and a lack of reciprocity among institutions. These factors not only unnecessarily increase costs, but also delay patient access to advanced medical technologies.

The Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed) initiated the multi-association work group to promote a broader understanding of the scope of concerns and review best practices concepts. The group hopes that its recommendation for best practices can be adopted as a national standard for the credentialing of Clinical HCIRs. The new proposal would end the duplicative and sometimes conflicting regulations set up by each health care facility, which require health industry representatives to undergo divergent, redundant and burdensome credentialing procedures.

"We believe that patients will benefit from greater uniformity in HCIR credentialing. Our proposed best practices promote patient safety while decreasing administrative costs and burdens caused by divergent and overbroad facility access policies," said Terry Chang, M.D., AdvaMed's director of medical and legal affairs.

The recommendation focuses on five basic criteria for Clinical HCIRs: updated vaccinations; product or general liability insurance; background verification; hospital unit orientation; policy and procedures and training documentation.

The full text of the groups' recommendation can be found at:
http://www.advamed.org/NR/rdonlyres/BBFE9CAE-05B6-4EE3-8279-EF8E69446784/0/JointBestPracticesRecommendationforClinicalHCIRCredentialingv7.pdf


In addition to AdvaMed, signatories to the best practices recommendation are:

American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN)

Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM)

More Industry Headlines