Becker's Hospital Review

10 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING 1 EXECUTIVE BRIEFING Healthcare technology conversations often focus on improving efficiency at the point of care — reducing the note-taking burden, streamlining workflows, adding telehealth capabilities and giving clinicians more time with patients. These investments are necessary, particularly as provider burnout remains a persistent challenge. But for many clinicians, administrative burden begins long before they see their first patient. One of the most overlooked contributors is provider credentialing, a process essential to patient safety, compliance and reimbursement, yet often treated as a back-office formality. In reality, credentialing is a critical gatekeeper for workforce capacity and revenue. Manual, fragmented processes can delay provider onboarding by months, preventing clinicians from delivering care or generating revenue while compounding administrative strain. Modernizing credentialing with technology represents one of the fastest, most tangible opportunities to reduce clinician burden, accelerate time to practice and unlock capacity that has long been hiding in plain sight. The costs of credentialing: out of sight, out of mind Medical education programs rarely cover the necessity of credentialing for clinicians, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and respiratory therapists. John Bou, president and co-founder of Modio Health, underscored the risks of overlooking credentialing: "You only hear about credentialing when something goes wrong. Yet it's critically important for healthcare — without it, providers can't see patients or get paid." "No one discusses how providers will be allowed to practice in the hospital," Kirk Heath, MD, co-founder of Modio Health, said. "When clinicians get out of medical school or residency programs, they're hit with the administrative burden of the credentialing process." At the same time, many healthcare organizations have historically treated credentialing as a behind-the-scenes function. Decentralized, manual processes are often managed by back-office teams with limited visibility across the broader enterprise. Given this context, it's not surprising that healthcare technology initiatives have largely overlooked credentialing, focusing instead on higher-profile investments, such as making visits more efficient, expanding patient access or streamlining surgery and clinical decision-making. This trend is problematic, however. When credentialing processes fail or lag behind, everything downstream suffers — from revenue to staffing and compliance. The financial consequences of outdated credentialing systems are often underestimated. Delays in onboarding providers translate into lost billable time, administrative rework, duplicative verifications, staff burnout and limited access to care for patients. As a workaround, organizations may turn to emergency or temporary provider privileges. While this may enable clinicians to deliver care, they can't get paid for services until they are fully credentialed. Retroactive billing for services is possible, but it's costly and labor-intensive, John explained. Investing in the right technology can address these challenges. Advanced credentialing platforms centralize data, automate primary source verification and minimize errors. This reduces onboarding time, which enables clinicians to get to work faster and generates more revenue for hospitals and health systems. Dr. Heath noted that after organizations adopt Modio OneView © , credentialing processes that previously took 80 to 120 days now take less than 30 days. "If you think about what an average physician or surgeon bills, it's probably thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars per day," he said. "Reducing the time to bill to 30 days means that hospitals can begin generating significant revenue much sooner." The hidden costs of outdated credentialing — and the case for modernization

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