Your case log for locums credentialing, ready before the next packet.

Every facility credentials you itself

Medicare’s rules for hospitals require the medical staff to “examine the credentials of all eligible candidates” and require the bylaws to include “criteria for determining the privileges to be granted.” Each hospital writes its own criteria. So a locum who covers three hospitals in a year goes through three medical staff offices, each with its own privileges form and its own idea of what proof of experience looks like.

42 CFR 482.22(a)(2) and (c)(6), Condition of participation: Medical staff.

Who sets the numbers, what the boards do and don’t ask for, and how reappointment works are covered in the credentialing case log guide →

A complete file comes first

Many hospitals can grant temporary privileges while a new application waits for final approval, but on their own terms. Stanford Health Care’s policy, for example, allows an initial period of 120 days, and only once the application is “deemed 100% complete” and the verifications turn up no issues with licensure or privileges.

Stanford Health Care, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley, Temporary Privileges policy, last approved April 2025.

Other hospitals set their own limits and their own list of what has to be in the file. The practical lesson is the same: a start date can wait on a missing document, and a case log you have to rebuild by hand is often the slowest piece. Ask each medical staff office, early, exactly what it needs.

What a new facility may ask for

Bylaws vary, so treat this as what’s common, not a rule:

• A list of cases or procedures for a recent window, often the last 12 or 24 months.
• Counts by facility, so the committee can see where your experience comes from.
• Counts by type: anesthesia technique, procedure, specialty, or the categories on its privileges form, such as cardiac, obstetrics or regional.
• Only what you did yourself. For nurse anesthetists, ASA’s statement on privileges calls for “Documentation of tasks personally performed (not tasks observed)” and a “Quantitative assessment of tasks personally performed within the past two years.”

ASA, Statement on Clinical Privileges for the Non-Physician Anesthesia Provider, approved October 18, 2023.

None of it should carry a patient’s name, record number or birthday. A credentialing log is counts and dates, not charts.

Licenses and DEA, state by state

Locum work across state lines multiplies the paperwork behind the case log:

• DEA. A DEA registration rests on each state’s own authority to handle controlled substances, and “a separate registration” is required for each principal place of professional practice where they’re dispensed. DEA’s answer for locum tenens: you’ll need a separate DEA registration in each state where you administer, dispense or prescribe them, unless you work solely in a hospital or clinic that agrees to let you use its registration. You can also transfer an existing registration from one state to another.
• Physician licenses. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact offers “a voluntary, expedited pathway to licensure for qualified physicians who wish to practice in multiple states.” It speeds up getting each state’s license; it doesn’t replace them. As of October 5, 2026, it lists 44 member states and 2 territories.
• Expiry dates. Every license, registration and life-support card has its own. Miss one and the next credentialing file stops there.

DEA Diversion Control Division, “What is DEA’s policy concerning Locum Tenens?”; 21 CFR 1301.12(a); Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, imlcc.com.

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