Physicians, Hospitals Benefit from Reentry Programs

Why should a medical staff use formal reentry programs such as CPEP to assess a practitioner’s needs and design an educational program rather than using internal resources? Grace says that CPEP has more experience providing these services than the average medical staff does.

“It gives [practitioners] the context of knowing what the educational needs are, and also, since we have a lot of experience assisting physicians through the educational processes, we make pretty specific educational recommendations,” Grace says.

Nevertheless, medical staffs may want to consider how many of their practitioners are eligible for reentry programs and whether the numbers are high enough to warrant the creation of an internal reentry program. Alternately, several medical staffs may consider joining together to form such a program.

CPEP keeps a close watch over practitioners in its programs. The practitioners submit materials outlining what practice activities and procedures they are performing. Once a month, CPEP discusses the practitioner’s activities and their outcomes, if applicable, with the practitioner.

Also on a monthly basis, the mentor submits written reports to CPEP about the practitioner’s progress.

“Every three or four months we [send] a written report both to the client and to the referring organization,” says Anna Wegleitner, MD, associate medical director at CPEP. “If somebody’s only in a four-month reentry plan, it might be that the final summary report is their [only] report.”

If the referring organization is a hospital with a credentials committee, these reports contain valuable competency data that the committee can use to evaluate the practitioner’s progress and eligibility for graduating from the reentry program and taking a more active role on the medical staff.