Position on Reappointment

NAMSS Supports Three-Year Reappointment Cycles for Licensed Independent Practitioners

NAMSS supports revising regulatory and accreditation policies to extend the reappointment cycle for licensed independent practitioners* (credentialed practitioners) from two years to three years. A three year practitioner-reappointment cycle would align with health plans’ re-credentialing schedules and enable medical services professionals (MSPs) to more effectively perform ongoing professional practice evaluation (OPPE) on credentialed and privileged practitioners.

OPPE and the practitioner-reappointment process requires similar quality assessments, which creates redundancies that hinder effective practitioner evaluation (Appendix A). These similarities require MSPs to perform the same evaluations on the same practitioner for both reappointment and OPPE—almost simultaneously. Extending reappointment to three years would enable MSPs to focus on OPPE between reappointment cycles and more readily take action on performance concerns that OPPE discovers.

A three-year reappointment cycle would also reduce the burdens that overlapping evaluations have upon practitioners, the costs health systems incur from practitioner evaluation, and the amount of time MSPs spend performing redundant administrative tasks. To enable Tomorrow’s MSP, NAMSS supports systematic changes that reduce these unnecessary costs, redundancies, and inefficiencies so MSPs can use their training to focus exclusively on assessing practitioner performance and clinical privileges, competency, and quality—components that are critical to ensuring patient safety.

*Practitioner is any individual who receives clinical privilege and/or membership by the Governing Board, including, but not limited to, Medical Staff members and Advance-Practice Professionals

NAMSS Practitioner-Reappointment Position Statement - Appendix A

Published September 2021