Safer Workforce: Effective Credentialing and Provider Management: Trusting Your Patients are in Good Hands

March 16, 2022 Fiona Sykes

In the drive for zero harm, practitioner management matters. Lori Hogge, Assistant Director of Medical Staff Services for Saint Barnabas Medical Center at RWJBarnabas Health knows firsthand how important provider credentialing is to ensure the right provider is in the right place at the right time. She also knows how using this kind of surveillance can identify a provider who is not in a position to provide patients with the safest care possible. 

Even knowing the value, medical staff credentialing is still often dreaded by providers because they feel bogged down and overwhelmed by all of the details. Hogge and her team at RWJBH partnered with RLDatix in 2018 to tailor the provider management solution to their needs, allowing a large and disparate organization to have new visibility of credentialing and privileging in a single solution. As much as RWJBH wanted a standardized approach to provider management and enterprise level views, they also wanted to maintain site level autonomy. 

The credentialing teams think of themselves as the gatekeepers to patient safety – it is their responsibility to ensure processes are purposeful and done correctly to avoid negligent credentialing. And, importantly to the entire health system, doing due diligence to ensure that providers have the right qualifications to be privileged protects the organization’s reputation.  

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The RLDatix provider credentialing solutions makes it easier on both the credentialing teams and the providers. It shares static affiliations across the organization, things that don’t change from site to site. For example, once a provider’s education is verified, you don’t have to reverify it again at a different site.  

For RLDatix’s Chris Malanuk, VP of Provider Solutions, one of the most impressive things about RWJBH’s implementation has been the transformation from single entity, single points of entry about providers to sharing data across the health system for broader data captures – nearly half of Hogge’s staff has multiple appointments across the institution, so this enterprise approach helps them behave as a comprehensive health system instead of individual hospitals.  

Ultimately, RWJBH was focused on keeping patients safer by protecting their workforce by knowing the providers they credential are qualified, competent and going to do the best that they can for the patient. The credentialing teams know their work is purposeful and matters and contributes to safer patients, a safer workforce and a safer organization.


Interested in hearing more from RWJBH, including how they navigated credentialing during the height of the pandemic? Watch the full video from our 2021 Boston Connections event.

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