Members Only | 05.12.26
The Numbers Are on Your Side: Using the NAMSS Benchmark Report To Advocate for Your Team
By Amy Lyons, CPCS, CPMSM, MBA, FMSP
Your team is stretched thin. Applications are backing up. Staff is absorbing responsibilities that span far beyond what any job description captures, and every time you ask for additional resources, you are met with answers involving budget constraints and competing priorities. The problem is not that the need is not real — it is. The problem is making leadership see what you see.
The NAMSS 2026 Benchmark Report gives medical services professionals (MSPs) external, credible, nationally sourced data to anchor that conversation. Drawing on responses from MSPs across acute care hospitals, credentialing verification organizations, critical access hospitals, academic and teaching institutions, ambulatory surgery centers, and managed care organizations, the report offers the most current cross-setting workforce snapshot the profession has. It is not a prescription for what adequate staffing looks like — no benchmark is. It is a powerful reference point, and knowing how to use it is a skill every MSP needs.
"Credentialing, enrollment, and medical staff functions are not administrative support work. They are operational infrastructure with direct patient safety, compliance, and financial implications." — Amy Lyons, CPCS, CPMSM, MBA, FMSP
Start With Where You Currently Stand
Before you can advocate effectively, you need to know where your organization sits relative to other organizations. The benchmark gives you that lens.
Look at staffing levels for your facility type, the file volumes for your setting, and how organizations similar to yours in size, structure, and accreditation status are resourced. Then compare that picture honestly to your own organization. Are you at the median for your peer group? Below it? Above it in workload but below it in staffing? That comparison — your numbers against the benchmark — is your opening argument.
For credentials verification organizations (CVOs) and organizations that rely on CVOs, this comparison requires an additional step. Raw file count alone does not capture the full scope of a CVO operation. A CVO handling only primary source verification carries a fundamentally different workload than one that also manages application intake, mailing and receipt, privilege data collection, expirable tracking, and payor roster maintenance. Two CVOs with identical full-time employee (FTE) counts may be doing very different volumes of work. Before you benchmark, define what your CVO actually does — then find the comparison that fits.
Provider enrollment adds further complexity. Hospital-based enrollment, managed care organization credentialing, and payor-specific requirements, such as roster management, each operate under different workflows, timelines, and compliance requirements. Every organization’s model is unique. When you pull your enrollment workload into the comparison, be specific about which functions your team owns and where they sit in the broader operational structure.
The Benchmark Does Not Capture Everything — Don’t Forget to Use That
The benchmark measures files processed and FTE count. It does not measure what most medical staff offices actually carry day to day. That gap is not a weakness in the data — it is your most powerful internal advocacy tool.
Most medical staff offices support work that never appears in file volume metrics, including:
- Medical staff governance, including committee coordination, meeting management and logistics, election cycles, and leadership succession.
- Professional conduct and complaint processes involving medical staff.
- OPPE and FPPE tracking and provider notification.
- CME administration and accreditation compliance.
- Policy development and regulatory documentation.
- Temporary privileging administration.
These functions are operationally significant, compliance-sensitive, and likely entirely invisible in any benchmark comparison.
For CVOs, scope variation is the variable that the benchmark cannot see. Two CVOs with identical FTE counts may carry vastly different workloads depending on whether their responsibilities include application management, privilege data collection, expirable tracking, payor roster maintenance, or delegation audit support — in addition to or instead of primary verification alone or what primary sources are verified for what time period. The benchmark will not surface that distinction. Your staffing proposal must.
Build a scope inventory specific to your operation. Document which functions live where, who owns the labor, and roughly how much time each function demands. That inventory, paired with benchmark data, transforms an abstract staffing request into a documented, defensible business case.
Connect Staffing to Risk, Not Just Workload
Workload arguments resonate with people who already understand the work. Risk arguments resonate with everyone else — and everyone else is usually in the room when budget decisions are made.
The benchmark’s timing data is your bridge. Use it to show leadership what happens when processing capacity cannot keep pace with demand. Delayed provider onboarding translates directly to delayed billing and revenue exposure. Gaps in reappointment cycles create privileging lapses with real accreditation and regulatory consequences. Provider enrollment delays mean practitioners cannot bill payers — a revenue cycle impact that finance leaders understand immediately and viscerally.
The broader point is this: Credentialing, enrollment, and medical staff functions are not administrative support work. They are operational infrastructure with direct patient safety, compliance, and financial implications. When you frame your resource request in those terms — and anchor it in external benchmark data alongside your own internal scope documentation — you are no longer asking leadership to take your word for it. You are showing them the evidence.
Disarm the Pushback
Prepare for the arguments you will face: “Our volume doesn’t justify more staff.” File count is one dimension of workload. Governance, enrollment, complaint management, compliance, and CME functions do not appear in file volume metrics. Show the full picture, not just the files.
“Other organizations manage with fewer people.” The benchmark reflects what is, not what is adequate. Organizations operating below median staffing are absorbing risk, not necessarily modeling efficiency. The timing data makes that risk visible.
Make the Case … Then Share It
No two medical staff offices are alike. No two CVOs carry identical scopes. No two enrollment functions look the same across settings. That is precisely why the benchmark is a starting point, not a finish line. The report tells you where the profession stands broadly. Your internal data — your scope, your volumes, your cycle times, your risk exposure — is what makes the case specific, credible, and hard to dismiss.
Every MSP leader who walks into a budget conversation with data, a full-scope workload inventory, and a risk-framed argument advances two things at once: their team’s immediate needs and the profession’s long-term case that MSP staffing is a patient safety infrastructure issue — not a discretionary line item.
The data exists, the framework is here, and the case is yours to make. As this work evolves, the NAMSS Industry Benchmarks Task Force will continue gathering input from the profession, and even small contributions to future surveys help ensure the data reflects what MSPs are truly experiencing.