100% Credentialed

Is it a goal of your clinic to achieve 100% staff credentialing? If not, your facility is missing a huge opportunity. Having a fully credentialed staff sends the message to referring physicians, patients, and your local community that meeting a national standard of high quality health care is your clinic's #1 priority. Being fully credentialed also sends the message that your clinic has a very competent clinical team. And when faced with making a patient referral, wouldn't you rather refer a patient to a facility that you trust to be competent and provide the highest quality of care?

Clinics Setting the Standard

We recently received very exciting news from two clinics who, after holding an onsite Introductory Course in Hyperbaric Medicine at their facility, taught by Wound Education Partners, now have a fully credentialed staff team! The Respiratory Therapy & Hyperbaric Oxygen Services at the OhioHealth MedCentral Mansfield Hospital has four RRT-CHT's plus one CHRN on staff; each person passed their respective NBDHMT CHT and CHRN test, and one individual passed with distinction! Their department opened in February 2012 with two Sechrist chambers. They have four monitoring physicians, two pulmonologists, one infectious disease and one general surgeon. All staff in the HBOT department are certified CHT and CHRN which is a condition of employment in their center. Their department is located within the hospital and they work very closely with the wound care department. They are scheduled for UHMS accreditation in Aug 2014.

Another clinic, the Center for Wound Care and Hyperbarics at Springhill Medical Center in Mobile, Alabama is one of only six facilities nationally to have earned UHMS accreditation four times, and became the only facility in Mobile, Alabama to have a fully certified staff. Their nurses took the CHRN national certification exam from the NBDHMT and all passed! Their facility is now fully credentialed!

Julio Garcia,CHT, CHRN, BSN and Program Director for the Center for Wound Care and Hyperbarics at Springhill Medical Center, shared this with us, "Thanks to Wound Care Education Partners, we have an onsite educational format that allows for quality training of clinical staff in order to achieve full credentialing for Registered Nurses and the Technicians. In addition, it has been instrumental in maintaining our credentialing with the UHMS."

Staff Photo of the Respiratory Therapy & Hyperbaric Oxygen Services at the OhioHealth MedCentral Mansfield Hospital. From left to right: Dr Sunil Vaidya Medical Director, Dr Prity Vaidya Infectious Disease, Laura Demarest CHRN, Teresa Owens RRT/CHT, Sharon Conley RRT/CHT Assistant Director Randee Frangella RRT/CHT Mike Schwartz Executive Director Angela Deal RRT/CHT			Julio Garcia CHT, RN, BSN and Program Director Center for Wound Care and Hyperbarics at Springhill Medical Center in Mobile, Alabama during a WCEP sponsored Introductory Course in Hyperbaric Medicine

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is this, it may cost your facility more money up front to get a fully credentialed staff in place, however, look at the cost benefit. If practitioners trust your facility and make more referrals, your case load increases and with it your bottom line. When your bottom line increases, your clinic doors stay open, your hospital network wants to keep your clinic up and running, and you keep your job! Also, if your staff has a higher level of knowledge, competence, and performance you will have less incidents that occur, and thus incur less overall risk.

Credentialing Standards

For more information about credentialing standards, we invite you to read the recently published UHMS Credentialing and Privileging Guidelines for Hyperbaric Medicine Physicians in the U.S.A.

The guidelines detail the essentials of credentialing standards for hyperbaric medicine physicians praticing in the U.S.A. These standards were developed by an ad hoc committee of the UHMS. As per John J. Feldmeier, DO, FACR, FUHM and President of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society (UHMS), "this document is not meant to be an all encompassing statement of credentialing and privileging for hyperbaric physicians. We plan to publish a larger document in a future edition of the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal to address more detailed standards for American physicians as well as standards for privileging our international UHMS members in their own countries."

Take Action Now! 

Get your facility on the road to being fully credentialed. Contact Wound Care Education Partners today and schedule a training course at your facility! WCEP offers training at your facility, saving your clinic thousands of dollars in travel expenses, staff time, and overhead costs.

WCEP Onsite Training Courses Include:

• Introductory Course in Hyperbaric Medicine
• Hyperbaric Safety Director Role
• Wound Care Review
• Customized courses are available upon request. Click to email us now.

Contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call +1-561-776-6110