5 Signs Credentialing Is Holding You Back—And What to Do About It
Credentialing is the foundation of healthcare operations, ensuring that only qualified and compliant clinicians are onboarded. However, when credentialing processes are inefficient, they create roadblocks that hinder a health system’s ability to grow, thrive, and deliver high-quality care.
As Becker's 15th Annual Meeting draws near, now is the perfect time to examine whether your organization’s credentialing system is supporting your progress or hindering it.
Here are five critical signs that it might be time for a change.
1. Lengthy Onboarding Timelines
Prolonged credentialing timelines delay clinician onboarding, which leaves departments understaffed and patients underserved.
Every day a physician waits to start practicing due to these delays costs a hospital thousands in lost revenue. According to staffing firm CompHealth, the average cost of a physician vacancy is as much as $9,000 per day.
How to fix it:
Automate verification tasks such as primary source verifications (PSVs) and track licensure and certification updates in real-time to reduce manual bottlenecks.
Implement parallel processing to enable multiple credentialing checks to occur simultaneously.
Collaborate with recruitment teams to create a seamless handoff process, ensuring administrators can begin collecting documents early to avoid unnecessary delays.
2. High Administrative Burdens
Credentialing often involves repetitive manual tasks, such as verifying education credentials, confirming licensure, and reviewing malpractice histories. Alarmingly, in one survey, it was found that almost 60% of participants spent over four hours on primary source verification alone.
These time-consuming processes increase the workload on already stretched administrative staff, leaving them overwhelmed and prone to mistakes. High turnover due to employee burnout further exacerbates delays.
How to fix it:
Centralize documentation management using a single, cloud-based platform to store, organize, and access credentialing files. This reduces the time spent searching for documents.
Automate reminders and renewals with AI-powered systems to flag upcoming license expirations or incomplete submissions, allowing teams to address issues proactively.
Outsource certain credentialing tasks to external experts such as Radiant and free up internal staff to focus on more important work.
3. Inconsistent Processes Across Departments
A lack of standardization in credentialing procedures leads to confusion, delays, and errors. One department may require additional documentation that others do not, resulting in unnecessary back-and-forth communication.
Inconsistencies can also make it difficult to track progress or identify bottlenecks. Without a centralized system or shared standards, staff waste valuable time reconciling mismatched data or correcting redundant steps.
This problem becomes even more pronounced in larger healthcare systems where facilities adhere to different credentialing processes.
How to fix it:
Develop standardized workflows. In short, this means creating a single credentialing checklist aligned with national accreditation standards.
To improve consistency and efficiency, establish a cross-departmental oversight team to monitor processes, address inconsistencies, and promote accountability.
Adopt a unified technology platform that integrates seamlessly across departments to reduce redundancies and ensure all teams have access to the same information.
4. Missed Compliance Deadlines
Healthcare regulations require stringent credentialing practices to ensure patient safety and quality care.
Missed deadlines for licensure renewals or incomplete documentation can lead to severe consequences, such as fines, loss of accreditation, or legal action.
Compliance issues also create reputational risks that can undermine patient trust.
How to fix it:
To allow time to address expiring licenses or certifications, set automated alerts to remind teams about important dates.
Schedule biannual or quarterly audits to ensure credentialing files are current and meet regulatory standards.
Monitor compliance KPIs—such as the percentage of active files with current credentials—to identify and resolve gaps before they escalate.
5. Lost Revenue Opportunities
Inefficient credentialing directly impacts an organization’s revenue. Delays in onboarding clinicians reduce the ability to provide services, forcing hospitals to rely on temporary staff or redistribute workloads among existing teams.
Billing issues can also arise when services are performed by uncredentialed clinicians or when errors occur in the credentialing process.
Provider disqualification—where the payer believes the provider is unqualified to provide patient care—is the second most common cause of payer denials and thus lost revenue.
How to fix it:
Prioritize the credentialing of high-impact hires such as specialists or other roles that generate substantial revenue for the hospital.
Use analytics tools to calculate the financial impact of onboarding delays. This can later be used to make a compelling case for investing in process improvements.
Streamline workflows for locum tenens staff—temporary clinicians who often face additional hurdles in credentialing—to reduce delays and avoid further disruptions to patient care.
Partner with Radiant Healthcare to Transform Credentialing
Credentialing inefficiencies don't have to hold back your health system's growth. Radiant Healthcare's industry-leading solutions cut credentialing time in half, reduce costs, and enhance compliance.
For more information on how we leverage advanced automation and industry best practices, download Radiant Healthcare’s latest whitepaper here.
It’s packed with actionable strategies to streamline your credentialing process, reduce delays, and maximize efficiency.
References
https://comphealth.com/resources/reduce-physician-hiring-days-to-fill
https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/clinical-care/credentialling-inefficiencies-backlogs-create-revenue-leakage
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/13-top-reasons-for-claims-denials.html
