On average, it takes three to four months for credentialing (and contracting) to occur so you can accept patients. However, with the Affordable Care Act and some companies being extremely backlogged, it can take as long as five months or more.

Traditionally speaking, credentialing will take three to four months. We say 90 to 100 days. Right now, it’s dragging out a little more. But several different smaller companies (and even some of the bigger name companies) occasionally go a little faster. If you’re looking at EAP’s those come through really quickly.

What?! Why does the process take such a long time?! Well, let’s start at the beginning: which is filling out your credentialing applications. You have to fill out a separate application for every company you want to get networked with. And each one will take you around 10 or so hours to complete. Then, you have to follow up with all of these companies to ask if they received your application—to make sure it didn’t end up in the wrong hands (or the wrong department). And that’s only the beginning… THEN you have to continue calling these companies to see that the process is moving along and your application isn’t running into any issues.