Would the endoscopy market be improved by a new system of credentialing? I’d never asked myself that question. Never, that is, until I saw a news release issued recently by the University of Nebraska Medical Center regarding a family-medicine resident who is assisting in the development of a national universal credentialing system for endoscopists.
The resident in family medicine, Rubab Ali, M.D., is collaborating with 11 national surgical and medical societies on this effort, based on the news release. Dr. Ali recently spoke about three years of research on endoscopy guidelines and accreditation, in terms of developing a universal accreditation protocol.
Each of the various societies individually has its guidelines,” said Dr. Ali. “You can observe the structure that they use in credentialing, and of course, the intent is to have high-quality patient care and safety. However each of these societies has a different structure for how to credential the endoscopist. We intend to develop universal guidelines for all societies.
Ali’s mentor and one of her collaborators is Dale Agner, M.D. The two have been working with the McGoogan Health Sciences Library and many team members. According to the news release, the collaborators have reviewed more than 500 papers each, to explore four key questions:
Should competency-based training programs; procedural, volume-based requirements; or a combination of the two be employed for the education of the next generation of gastrointestinal endoscopists?
Should credentialing in gastrointestinal endoscopy be granted on completion of a competency-based training program and passing cognitive and skill-based examination, in procedural, volume-based requirements, or a combination of these principles?
Following initial credentialing, should re-credentialing be determined by procedural, volume-based criteria, or procedure-related patient outcomes data, or clinical performance evaluation based on simulated exams?
For GI endoscopy re-credentialing, should the re-credentialing cycle intervals be of shorter or longer duration to optimize endoscopist performance metrics and patient outcomes?
It’s a long process,” Ali explained. “It’s a hard job to gather all the societies and share research with all these societies’ experts.”
Ali spoke about the framework of her project at the ResQ Committee (Patient Safety, Quality Improvement, and Disparities Research Collaborative) meeting last spring. Next is to retrieve data from the accumulated papers, and to undertake meta-analysis and systemic reviews.
We have people from this sector who will be assisting,” Ali said. “Then we’ll be talking about what we do next. Where do we go from here?
