Hospitals Will Soon Have Access to More Non-Physician Information

Although the regulatory changes do not require organizations to query the NPDB looking for adverse licensing actions taken against non-physician and non-dentist practitioners, which is the case for physicians, it isn't a bad idea to do it regularly to safeguard themselves. If your hospital is Joint Commission-accredited, it must already query the NPDB for initial granting of privileges and whenever privileges are renewed. "It is rare that a practitioner's NPDB status would change while working at the hospital without the hospital knowing, but it can happen, so regular querying is a must."

Most new regulations and policy changes create a flurry of questions and confusion when they are first issued, but remember that for this particular change, the information now available in the NPDB is not new.

Hospitals and medical staffs, by querying state licensing agencies, professional societies, and other primary sources, could find licensing information about non-physician and non-dentist practitioners. These changes simply make that information more readily accessible.

So why make the changes at all? "Think about the gap between an anesthesiologist and a certified registered nurse anesthetist [CRNA]. Before these changes, both of them could commit the same error, both of them could have their privileges restricted, but only the anesthesiologist would be reported to the NPDB," says Mary Hoppa, MD, MBA, CMSL, a senior consultant at The Greeley Company, a division of HCPro, Inc. in Marblehead, MA. "There is credence in reporting more people."