According to an article in The National Law Review, The Joint Commission recently announced slightly revised ‘credentialing by proxy rules’. Before a practitioner may provide services in a hospital, he or she must have their qualifications evaluated and verified. This process, known as credentialing, ensures an individual possesses the necessary qualifications to provide medical services to patients. ‘Credentialing by proxy’ allows a hospital receiving services to accept the distant site hospital’s credentialing and privileging decisions. Certain criteria must be met in order for a hospital to qualify to utilize credentialing by proxy. Previously, this included requiring both the originating site hospital and distant site hospital to be accredited with the Joint Commission. The new change allows the distant site telemedicine entity to be accredited with The Joint Commission or, alternatively, enrolled in the Medicare program. The affected standard is MS.13.01.01, EP 1, and is reflected in the Joint Commission’s 2021 update to their Comprehensive Accreditation Manuals.

Comprehensive Accreditation Manuals: https://store.jcrinc.com/2021-comprehensive-accreditation-manuals/