Legacy Credentialing Software: How CredentialStream Got Its Start

Every successful venture has a predecessor: cars started off as carriages, calculators were originally abacuses, and the laptop you can’t live without was once a typewriter. The beauty of technology lies in the fact that it is always improving and evolving, and that’s no different when it comes to credentialing software. In many ways, understanding our genesis gives us incredible insight into who we are today and how we function, which is why we are diving into our roots in this post!

The History of VerityStream

CredentialStream was born from a collection of legacy products produced by some leading names in the industry: 

• HealthLine Systems was founded in 1985, and quickly gained a reputation for having a market-leading credentialing, privileging, quality management solution, EchoCredentialing.
• Morrisey Associates was founded in 1987, and rapidly grew their company with deep subject matter expertise around CVO formation and privileging best practices within MSOW, a web-based credentialing software solution.
• Sy.Med was formed in 1995 to handle the credentialing needs and various data exchanges between providers and payers. Their claim to fame, a robust payer forms library, drew many medical groups to adapt OneApp, the company’s credentialing solution.

All three of these companies were true experts in their fields. HealthLine Systems was skilled at credentialing, Morrissey Associates was a pro at privileging, and Sy.Med focused on enrollment. Together, they had 75 years of combined healthcare experience.

Sy.Med was acquired by HealthStream (our parent company) in October of 2012. HealthLine Systems was next to join the fold in March of 2015. Both companies were rebranded to Echo, A HealthStream Company, a few months later. Morrisey Associates was acquired by HealthStream in August of 2016 and was rebranded as Morrisey, A HealthStream Company shortly after. 

The Echo and Morrisey companies thrived individually for several years, but both teams realized there was a great opportunity to pull these two entities together to innovate at an entirely new level. In January 2018, Echo and Morrisey formed a new organization, VerityStream, with a new solution, CredentialStream, that combined their respective strengths.

It certainly wasn’t a decision we took lightly. We had two amazing companies being supported by unique, stellar teams. But we took a hard look at where the industry was headed and what clients needed.

Why Medical Staff Offices Need Automation

When it comes to credentialing, privileging and enrollment, there are a lot of different parties involved, but all of these stakeholders need one thing – access to reliable provider data. When disparate, disconnected systems are used to manage credentialing, privileging and enrollment, multiple sources of provider data are created. This leads to both data redundancy and inaccuracy.

While our legacy solutions were really great on their own, we noticed that more and more walls were being built in between the departments and teams managing credentialing, privileging and enrollment. Provider data is key to powering these important activities within a hospital, but it wasn’t being used and shared very efficiently.

Additionally, we noticed that the role of the medical staff office was really beginning to evolve. It evolved from being a compliance office and workflow center to a function that can add great value by capturing and analyzing data that helps improve patient safety, provider satisfaction, the revenue cycle and more.

These trends really were the impetus behind combining our legacy solutions into a “greatest hits” solution. We wanted our clients to be able to link all the underlying process that were being automated and all the data involved and really capture the greatest amount of value.

What is CredentialStream?

CredentialStream combines what our customers love about our legacy products and adds a bit of spice. All of the great functionality in OneApp, EchoCredentialing, and MSOW is incorporated in a SaaS solution that has a really intuitive design plus some great features including updated workflows, native reports, benchmarks, privileges, payer forms, performance profiles, data tables, and more. Everything really comes together in CredentialStream to produce a single solution that enables you to apply, validate, enroll, credential, privilege, and evaluate your team.

CredentialStream wouldn’t be here if not for OneApp, EchoCredentialing and MSOW paving the way. But as we all know, continuous innovation is essential for future growth, and CredentialStream’s unique combination of Platform, Content, and Data is pivotal in catapulting our customers into the future.

Platform

The greatest tools are useless if no one can use them. User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are a key part of CredentialStream’s foundation. The UI within EchoCredentialing and MSOW always valued function over form and resulted in now antiquated platform formats such as text-heavy tables and Windows applications. CredentialStream presents an intuitive experience and standardized UI. However, we did not lose sight of functionality in our transformation, CredentialStream offers intuitive built-in reporting and automated data integration projects, all available without the need for a third-party tool.

Content

One of the great parts of CredentialStream is that it doesn’t come to you as an empty shell. It comes with turnkey out-of-the-box content. This content is presented as a library with multiple variations to meet your organizations needs and bundled in a way that is intuitive and easy to plug and play. Examples of types of content you can find in CredentialStream include:

• Provider satisfaction surveys
• Verification letters
• Workflows

Data

With CredentialStream we took an approach of serving data back to our clients to help them inform their decision-making. This manifested in our legacy solutions as visualizations of how long a reindexing process would take to complete. This evolved in CredentialStream to taking pre-built data visualization tools that not only show customers how long a current workflow process takes, it also compares that data against industry averages. And, CredentialStream takes it even one step further by providing recommendations and actions on how a process or metric can be improved. Examples of these types of insight visualizations include:

• Credentialing turnaround time
• Application completion time
• Required items time

Make the switch

If you’re ready for improved workflows and reporting for everyday tasks like privileging, initial credentialing and recredentialing, and expirables management, then it may be time to switch to CredentialStream! As always, we’re here to help, and can guide you in every step of the process, so reach out to us with any questions, or schedule a demo of CredentialStream. See how the best of OneApp, EchoCredentialing, MSOW and then some, come together in one credentialing software platform.