What do admitting privileges mean?
Admitting privileges are formal agreements between a physician and a specific hospital allowing the physician to directly admit patients to the hospital and provide services to their patients in that hospital as medical staff.
What does having hospital privileges mean?
Hospital admitting privileges are the rights granted to a doctor by a hospital to admit patients to that particular hospital. The basic premise is that, if you need to go the hospital, your primary care physician can admit you at any hospital that has granted them privileges.
Why are admitting privileges important?
Admitting privileges have been used as a tool to attack abortion providers in several U.S. states, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Texas. This means the doctor is unable to provide an abortion to a patient unless that doctor has admitting privileges, regardless of where the procedure occurs.
What does it mean if a doctor doesn’t have admitting privileges?
This means hospitals take full responsibility for awarding appropriate privileges, which means if the physician is not granted privileges, they cannot practice in that hospital. Whether or not a physician receives hospital privileges is decided by a committee of the hospital’s medical staff.
Why would a doctor lose hospital privileges?
Physicians could risk losing privileges at any hospital by taking the attitude that their privileges at that hospital are less important because of opportunities they think they might have at some other hospital.
What hospital privileges are needed?
In order to award privileges, the hospital will review a physician’s credentials. This means the medical credentialing process must be completed before the hospital privileges process can begin. Credentials review a physicians’ education, residencies, fellowships, board certifications, and practice experience.