Credentialing in a Technological World

Those who know me, know that I am a tech geek. From gadgets to using technology to improve processes, I'm on it. Credentialing processes have come a long way since I started in this field in 1998. At that time, credentialing databases were just starting out. Now we have highly sophisticated systems that have the capability to take some of the most time consuming and mundane tasks and make them bearable.

These advances allow us to save time, money and other resources so that we are able to focus on the meat and potatoes of the process. There is a misconception that the more tech we use the less people are needed. Tech is cold and hard. It has no feelings, no judgement, no life experiences to help drive decisions.

For example, our system has web crawl capabilities. This works very well, because, instead of us just verifying licenses upon expiration, manually I might add, we can now schedule an automatic check of licenses for all of our medical staff every month. This can alert us of any potential issues.

We get this information sooner, but it also means that we have to review and act on this information more often. We have to ensure that it ran smoothly and follow up if there was an errors or adverse information returned.

Is this monthly check a requirement? No, but if there is something available that allows us to be even an inch ahead of the game, why shouldn't we use it?

Granted, tech takes some getting used to and it doesn't always work the way we like it to but being open to the possibilities could make our lives easier. We are all juggling so much and there is always a new project or priority, so sometimes a sprinkle of tech and automation is just what we need.

I will be exploring tech tips and tricks in future posts. If there is something that you would like a tip on, let me know.