Economic credentialing survey of university teaching hospitals.

Economic credentialing, the process of applying economic criteria to the determination of initial appointments or reappointments of physicians to hospital medical staffs, has become a major issue in hospital medical staff relations. Nearly all major academic health center hospitals have the ability to perform economic analyses of faculty/physician clinical practices, and more than one-third of their CEOs see nothing wrong with terminating or denying hospital privileges for excessive use of hospital resources. Sixty-eight percent of surveyed academic health center respondents currently develop and review physician practice profiles, but only 35 percent of these respondents include economic data.