Melissa Walters, MS, FMSP, CPCS®, CPMSM®, has come a long way since she was a receptionist at a West Virginia nonprofit community health system. Like many in the medical staff services profession, “I fell in love working with physicians, and being their go-to person.” At the health system, Walters was responsible for completing credentialing and
Team Med Global knows that a helping hand can fast-track your career and your project goals. TMG's infographic illustrates how four types of cheerleaders – peers, coaches, mentors, and champions – can catapult you to success. Learn who they are, how they can help, when to find them, and how to find them. Remember that
As medical staff professionals (MSPs), we have been flooded with articles and webinars about disaster privileging. The environment in which we navigated disaster privileging was traumatic for many of us on multiple levels. The fear for our personal safety, the sudden shift to lockdown, the isolation from our families, the shift to remote work on
When John Pastrano, CPCS®, CPMSM®, BBA started working part-time in a local Texas hospital’s quality department, he was taking a class to learn a brand-new software program called Excel. The executive secretary in charge of credentialing had a lightbulb moment and asked Pastrano if he could leverage his software knowledge to create a quality profile.
Across the arc of your career, chances are good that you’ve relied on a cheerleader, acted as a cheerleader for someone else, or both. We often group all of those who have supported us into the “mentor” bucket, and those whom we support into the “mentee” bucket. But career-related supporting roles are nuanced, and teasing
Whether your primary responsibilities are in the realm of payer enrollment or your organization is merging credentialing and payer enrollment functions, it may be time to up your game. The Provider Enrollment Specialist Certificate (PESC) demonstrates your mastery of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines and regulations – the minimum requirements for enrollment
Living and working through the COVID-19 pandemic left many of us wondering how we managed to succeed in keeping the wheels of the MSD department rolling. New daily information about the virus led to a growing understanding of its implications for our work environments and led to developing new work strategies. Leading teams, departments, and
When I was a newbie, I learned a central lesson about credentialing: that to ensure compliance with the standards, the primary source verification documents I obtained for a practitioner were for my facility only, and peer review information was confidential. That changed when shared services agreements began to take hold. Over the years, four trends
Christine “Cris” Mobley, CPMSM®, CPCS®, draws a direct line from the relationships she’s built to the abundant opportunities presented to her over the course of her flourishing career. Mobley says that she and other pioneers in the medical services professional field – including Carol Cairns, Sue King, and Vicki Searcy – formed early bonds. “We’ve
After Karen Reed took an 18-month break from the medical records field following the birth of her second child, the 23-year-old made a bold move: submitting her application to become director of medical records at Community Hospital in Lubbock, Texas. When the hospital contacted her previous employer and noted that Reed didn’t have management experience,
The “Introduction to Health Care” textbook (Mitchell & Haroun, p. 502-503) outlines that managed care plans are designed to increase efficiency, cut costs, provide affordable healthcare, ensure quality care, and eliminate waste. In my 20-plus years of reviewing healthcare payer agreements, I have learned to successfully decipher terms and conditions, as well as negotiate on
The Client: PeaceHealth Based in Vancouver, Wash., PeaceHealth is a health system serving patients in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. More than 16,000 caregivers work at ten medical centers and care for patients in urban and rural communities. The Challenge PeaceHealth’s Medical Staff Services Department faced several challenges. Because the department’s had manual processes and
One of my favorite sayings is, “Change is chance.” I have used this mantra in coaching my team through transitions in new software, adapting to new processes, and moving into new offices. Personally, I am in the camp who loves change - most of the time. There are times, though, when change seems less like
Carole is inducted into the NAMSS Hall of Fame There’s a reason that Carole LaPine, MSA, CPMSM®, CPCS®, was one of the first two MSPs inducted into the NAMSS Hall of Fame. Actually, there are several reasons, all revolving around LaPine’s relentless commitment to excellence. The accolade she received in 2016 was the
Finding the optimal work-life balance is difficult – even for physicians. Like the rest of us, physicians are human beings with stress, emotions, and life situations that affect their behavior. Over the last several years, physician burnout rates have been a hot topic, and in the past year the world added a pandemic to the
