The Darling – Health Care’s Benchmark Case
Healthcare facilities should establish and uphold corporate ethics. These ethics guide the actions of all employees. In addition, ethics are important because they avert the risk of legal issues in healthcare. This paper discusses legal issues in a benchmark case and explores the relevance of the credentialing and privileging process.
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Legal Issues
The first legal issue is corporate negligence. A hospital is a corporation and should embrace the best standards when caring for patients (Pogzar, 2016). The primary aim of the hospital is to provide patient-centred care and to promote patient safety. To accomplish this, the hospital should have elaborate policies and standard operating procedures to assess the quality of service delivery (Pogzar, 2016). To promote quality, a hospital should recruit and retain competent healthcare providers, uphold the safety of equipment and facilities, and monitor the actions of all healthcare providers. In this case, the hospital failed to monitor the actions of its clinicians. Furthermore, the hospital did not have elaborate protocols that would have formed the basis for a referral or consulting a specialist in the event of uncertainties.
The second legal issue is a breach of duty by the physician and nurses. In this context, the physician had not managed a major leg fracture over the past three years. As such, he ought to have consulted a specialist for guidance. The physician should have referred the patient to a specialist for further management. On the other hand, nurses should have recognized the dead tissue on the patient’s leg and reported it promptly. This would have triggered specialist consultation and patient referral.
Ethical Duty to the Patient
Pogzar (2016) reports that the ethical duty of the hospital is to provide quality patient-centered care and to promote patient safety. The hospital did not fulfil its ethical duty to the patient. To begin with, it failed to formulate or embrace policies that promote quality care. For instance, it did not have enough competent nurses to detect and report the patient’s gangrenous leg. This contributed to the worsening of the patient’s condition.
Furthermore, the hospital failed to provide refresher training to its clinicians to enable them to manage diverse medical conditions. Secondly, the hospital did not have a competent physician to handle orthopedic cases. This impeded consultation and worsened the patient’s condition. Thirdly, the hospital failed to monitor the actions of its employees. Quality assurance teams would have identified knowledge gaps in patient management and formed the basis for patient referral.
Role and Importance of Credentialing and Privileging Process
McMullen and Howie (2020) report that credentialing entails evaluating and authenticating a healthcare provider’s education and training, licensure, and certification. Credentialing assesses the qualification and competence of a healthcare provider (Patel & Sharma, 2022). By so doing, it ensures that all healthcare practitioners who practice medicine are competent and provide high-quality healthcare services. Credentialing is also relevant because it holds healthcare practitioners to the same standard (Patel & Sharma, 2022). Privileging occurs when a healthcare practitioner is granted authority over a scope of practice (AHA.org, n.d.). Privileging specifies the type of services to be discharged by a healthcare practitioner. This is dependent on the credentials of a healthcare provider. Privileging promotes accountability because each healthcare provider is responsible for their actions (Patel & Sharma, 2022). Additionally, credentialing and privileging optimize the quality of healthcare services by ensuring that a competent workforce executes services based on their specialty. As such, it is an enabler for a value-based healthcare model (Patel & Sharma, 2022). Furthermore, credentialing and privileging minimize incidences of legal issues such as corporate negligence and breach of duty.
Application of Credentialing and Privileging Process
The credentialing and privileging process applies to this case. Physicians and nurses should undergo credentialing and privileging. During the pre-application stage, the credentials of the healthcare providers will be evaluated to determine whether they fulfil the minimum requirements for working at the facility (Patel & Sharma, 2022). The hospital should establish elaborate reasons for disqualifying applicants and a framework for re-application. The hospital should also establish temporary privileges for specialists who may be outsourced from other facilities (Patel & Sharma, 2022). Also, the hospital should formulate a code of conduct for all healthcare practitioners who undergo credentialing and privileging (Patel & Sharma, 2022). Some privileges can be granted with shadowing to ensure that healthcare providers demonstrate adequate competency before being granted full privileges (Patel & Sharma, 2022). In this context, nurses and physicians should undergo competency testing. This can be conducted by internal or external experts and specialists. For instance, the director of nursing services should oversee the credentialing and privileging process of nurses at the healthcare facility. Annual competency testing will equip healthcare practitioners with adequate knowledge and skills to handle various clinical conditions.
References
AHA.org. (n.d.). Streamlining the Credentialing and Privileging Process. https://trustees.aha.org/streamlining-credentialing-and-privileging-process
McMullen, P. C., & Howie, W. O. (2020). Credentialing and Privileging: A Primer for Nurse Practitioners. Journal for Nurse Practitioners, 16(2), 91–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nurpra.2019.10.015
Patel, R., & Sharma, S. (2022). Credentialing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519504/#:~:text=Credentialing%20is%20a%20formal%20process,their%20ability%20to%20practice%20medicine.
Pozgar, G. (2016). Legal and Ethical Issues for Healthcare Professionals (12th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning LLC.
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Question 
The Darling – Health Care’s Benchmark Case
Read the “Darling – Health Care’s Benchmark Case” in Chapter 8 of the textbook. Write a 500-750 word essay that addresses the following:
1. Describe two legal issues presented in this case.
2. Describe how the hospital failed in its ethical duty to the patient.
3. Describe the role and importance of the credentialing and privileging process.
4. Discuss applying the credentialing and privileging process to this scenario.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines in the APA Style Guide in the Student Success Center.