Regulatory Requirements

NAMSS 2025 Roundtable Report, ‘Clinical Peer Review: Establishing Best-Practice Standards for Optimal Results,’ Now Available

By Molly Ford, MPP

NAMSS is pleased to release its 2025 roundtable report, “Clinical Peer Review: Establishing Best-Practice Standards for Optimal Results,” which provides an overview of  the September 2025 industry roundtable discussion around the future of clinical peer review. The report provides a summary of the discussion with insights into practices, a peer review framework, and steps NAMSS will take to develop guidance and resources that healthcare organizations can use to inform their peer review programs.

Key Takeaways from NAMSS’ 2025 Roundtable

• Peer review is an examination of the organization as much as it is an examination of the practitioner.
• Peer review programs need practitioners’ buy-in and continuous engagement to foster trust in the process.
• Practitioner wellness is a contributing factor in their performance. 
• Peer review should seek to improve individual and organizational performance to improve patient outcomes. 
• Culture has a critical role in all peer review programs.
• Obtaining accurate and informative quality data makes individual practitioner assessments challenging.

NAMSS’ 11^th annual roundtable convened quality experts from around the country to discuss the current state of peer review, the role of standardization in the review process, and the potential that peer review can have in improving individual and organizational performance.

NAMSS 2025 Roundtable Participants:

• • American Commission for Health Care (ACHC)

  • American College of Surgeons (ACS)
  • American Hospital Association (AHA)
  • American Medical Association (AMA)
  • American Society for Health Care Risk Management (ASHRM)
  • Det Norske Veritas (DNV)
  • Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB)
  • GI Alliance
  • Health Resources and Services Administration/National Practitioner Data Bank (HRSA/NPDB)
  • National Association for Healthcare Quality (NAHQ)
  • National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA)
  • The Joint Commission (TJC)
  • URAC/Utilization Review Accreditation Commission

A special thank you to the roundtable organizers and panelists for their contributions to this event:

• Moderator: NAMSS Clinical Quality Liaison and Past President Kate Conklin, MS, CHC, CPHQ, CPMSM, CPCS
• Panelists: Brian Betner, JD; Casey Chapman, MD; Delicia Dimberg, MEd-OM, CPCS; and Diane Meldi, MBA, CPCS, CPMSM, FMSP
• The NAMSS Board of Directors

Roundtable Next Steps

NAMSS seeks to build upon the 2025 roundtable conversations to develop consensus for best practices in clinical peer review. In building upon the peer review framework outlined in the 2025 roundtable report, NAMSS welcomes feedback on strategies and approaches that healthcare organizations can incorporate to enhance their review processes.

NAMSS recognizes that medical services professionals (MSPs) have unique insight into successes and failures of peer review and welcomes feedback and engagement from its members on this process. Please contact Molly Ford to learn more about NAMSS’ initiative and ways you and your organizations can help.

About the NAMSS’ Roundtable Series

NAMSS launched its roundtable series in 2014 and has hosted industry partners nearly every year to discuss issues and opportunities related to practitioner credentialing and quality assessment.

Resulting standards and resources include:

• The Ideal Credentialing Standards
• The VGMET Form
• Updated three-year reappointment guidance
• Essential Common Data Elements for Payer Credentialing
• The Model Credentialing Application

NAMSS aims to engage industry partners via roundtable discussions to influence healthcare industry operations and standards that relate to the organized medical staff.

Learn more about the NAMSS Roundtable Series and look for more from NAMSS on peer review best practices soon!