The best medical credentialing company for your practice is the one that protects your effective dates, owns your CAQH and recredentialing calendar, shows you payer-by-payer status, and signs a business associate agreement. Qualigenix has completed 12,500+ credentialing applications for practices across 38+ specialties in 48 states, with an average onboarding of 6 days. Every "top 10 credentialing companies" list ranks vendors by marketing, not by what happens to your revenue. A practice manager choosing a vendor needs a different test: what will this company do on day one, who owns each deadline, and what do you lose if they miss one? The nine questions below come from the work Qualigenix does every day on payer enrollment, CAQH maintenance, recredentialing, and Medicare revalidation. Ask them of any vendor you're considering, including us. What does a medical credentialing company do? A medical credentialing company prepares and submits each provider's enrollment applications to Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers, then tracks every application until the payer issues an effective date. A full-service vendor also keeps the provider's CAQH profile attested, monitors license and certification expirations, and manages recredentialing and revalidation cycles so a provider never drops out of network. Credentialing is not the same as being in network. A payer can approve a provider's credentials and still not offer a contract if the panel is closed. Ask every vendor whether their work ends at the application or at a signed contract with a confirmed effective date. The 9 questions to ask before you sign 1. How do you protect our Medicare effective date? A good vendor files the Medicare application the day the provider's paperwork is complete, because the filing date sets your billing start. Under federal rules, a physician's Medicare effective date is the later of the date an approved application was filed or the date the provider first saw patients at the new location, and retrospective billing is allowed for only 30 days before that date. Every week a vendor waits to file is a week of Medicare visits you may never be paid for. 2. Who owns CAQH attestation? The vendor should own it. CAQH asks providers to re-attest their profile at least every 120 days. A lapsed attestation leaves commercial payers looking at an out-of-date profile, which stalls new applications. Ask how the vendor tracks the 120-day clock for each provider and who gets the reminder. 3. Does your work end at the application or at the contract? The right answer is the contract. Ask whether the vendor confirms the effective date in writing, collects the fee schedule, and checks that the provider is loaded correctly in the payer's system before you bill. An approval letter without a loaded contract still produces denials. 4. How do you track recredentialing and revalidation dates? A vendor should keep a calendar for every provider and every payer. Health plans that follow NCQA standards recredential practitioners at least every 36 months, and Medicare requires most providers to revalidate their enrollment every 5 years, or every 3 years for DMEPOS suppliers A missed date can deactivate billing privileges. Qualigenix tracks these cycles per provider as part of its [recredentialing services](https://qualigenix.com/services/recredentialing-services). 5. What do you need from our providers, and who chases it? The vendor should send one document list on day one and chase missing items itself. Licenses, DEA registrations, malpractice certificates, board certifications, and work history gaps are the usual holdups. Your office manager shouldn't become the vendor's collections desk. 6. How will we see status? You should get a payer-by-payer tracker with submission dates, reference numbers, and next follow-up dates. "We're working on it" is not a status. Ask to see a sample report before you sign. 7. What happens when a panel is closed? An honest vendor tells you upfront which panels in your market are closed and what options remain. No vendor can force a payer to open a full network. Be wary of anyone who promises approval. 8. Will you sign a business associate agreement? Yes, if the vendor will handle any patient data. HIPAA requires a covered entity to have a written contract with any business associate that meets the requirements at 45 CFR 164.504(e) ([HHS](https://www.hhs.gov/answers/business-associates/index.html)). This matters most when a vendor handles both credentialing and billing. Qualigenix runs its credentialing and billing work under HIPAA-compliant processes. 9. Do your credentialing and billing teams share the same record? They should, because a claim billed before a provider's effective date will deny. When one partner runs credentialing and billing, the billing team works from the same enrollment record and knows which payers a new provider can bill. Qualigenix manages both under one account through its [medical billing services](https://qualigenix.com//services/medical-billing-services) and [revenue cycle management services](/services/revenue-cycle-management-services/). In-house vs credentialing-only vendor vs billing and credentialing partner Why practices choose Qualigenix for credentialing Qualigenix credentials providers with Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers, builds and maintains CAQH profiles, and tracks recredentialing and Medicare revalidation dates for every provider on your roster. We work in any EHR or billing system, so you don't change software to work with us. Because the same team can run your [medical billing](/services/medical-billing-services), a new provider's effective dates reach your claims before the first claim goes out. Here's what we won't do: promise an approval date a payer hasn't given us, bury recredentialing in fine print, or keep your enrollment records from you. Qualigenix credentialing by the numbers