Professional staff membership and the process of credentialing and clinical privileging in a hospital.

Since 1985, accreditation standards of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) state that nonphysician providers such as optometrists may be appointed to a hospital's professional staff and may be granted clinical privileges in order to provide patient care services within that facility. This paper provides an overview of the mechanisms hospitals typically use to appoint and to grant clinical privileges to optometrists.