The Healthcare Executive's Guide to Successful Credentialing Pilot Programs

After working with hundreds of healthcare organizations on credentialing modernization, I've observed a troubling pattern: pilot programs have become where innovation goes to die.

Healthcare executives launch pilots with great enthusiasm, invest significant resources, and then... nothing. The pilot concludes without clear outcomes, stakeholders lose momentum, and organizations remain stuck with the same inefficient processes that prompted the pilot in the first place.

But it doesn't have to be this way. The most successful healthcare organizations I've partnered with have cracked the code on running pilots that actually drive transformation. Here's what they do differently:

The Foundation: Strategic Alignment Before Technology

The best pilots I've seen start not with technology evaluation, but with strategic clarity. Before any vendor conversations begin, successful organizations ask themselves:

What organizational goal is this pilot serving?

If your health system is focused on rapid growth, your credentialing pilot should directly enable faster provider onboarding. If you're managing margin compression, the pilot should demonstrate clear cost savings. If you're expanding telehealth services, the pilot should address multi-state licensing challenges.

This isn't just about having good intentions—it's about creating the narrative that ensures organizational buy-in and sustainable funding beyond the pilot phase.

Define Success (Or Watch Your Pilot Fail)

Here's where most pilots go wrong: organizations are so excited to start testing new technology that they skip the fundamental step of defining what success actually looks like.

The most effective pilots establish clear, measurable outcomes across three dimensions:

Efficiency Metrics: Can we reduce credentialing turnaround time by X days? Can we decrease administrative effort by Y hours per provider?

Quality Improvements: Can we reduce error rates? Can we improve compliance tracking? Can we enhance verification accuracy?

Financial Impact: What's the baseline cost per provider credential today? What cost savings do we expect to achieve?

But here's the critical part: you need baseline data. You can't measure improvement if you don't know where you're starting. Before any pilot begins, document your current state metrics across all these dimensions.

The Cross-Functional Imperative

Credentialing touches every part of your organization. IT manages the systems. HR handles provider onboarding. Compliance ensures regulatory adherence. Clinical leadership drives provider satisfaction.

The pilots that succeed engage all these stakeholders from day one—not as an afterthought when implementation challenges arise. Each stakeholder group needs to understand:

• How the pilot addresses their specific pain points

• What their role will be during the pilot

• How success will be measured from their perspective

Plan Your Exit Strategy Before You Start

This might sound counterintuitive, but successful pilots begin with the end in mind. Before launching any pilot, the most strategic organizations establish:

Clear metrics that would drive full implementation: What specific outcomes would make this a "no-brainer" decision to expand organization-wide?

Full implementation roadmap: If the pilot succeeds, what would enterprise rollout look like? What's the timeline? What's the investment required?

Decision-making framework: Who makes the go/no-go decision? When is that decision made? What information do they need?

I've seen too many "successful" pilots die in committee because no one planned for what came next.

Execution Excellence: The Art of Structured Flexibility

Once your pilot launches, success depends on structured monitoring combined with tactical flexibility.

Real-time tracking: Monitor your defined metrics continuously, not just at the end. Set up regular check-ins—weekly for short pilots, bi-weekly for longer ones.

Structured escalation: When issues arise (and they will), have clear procedures for addressing them. Who gets involved? How quickly? What's the decision-making process?

Adaptive planning: Stay nimble. The best pilots adapt to edge cases and unexpected scenarios while maintaining focus on core objectives.

The organizations that excel here treat pilots not as "testing periods" but as "structured learning experiences" where every challenge becomes valuable data for full implementation planning.

Beyond the Pilot: Converting Success into Transformation

Even successful pilots can stall without proper transition planning. The most effective organizations I work with establish clear success thresholds upfront and commit to decision-making timelines.

If a pilot demonstrates the defined value metrics, the path to full implementation should be automatic—not another months-long evaluation process.

The Strategic Imperative

In today's healthcare environment, where credentialing delays cost organizations over $10,000 per provider per day, pilots aren't academic exercises—they're strategic necessities. But only when executed with the discipline and framework I've outlined above.

The healthcare organizations thriving in 2025 will be those that view credentialing pilots not as back-office experiments, but as strategic initiatives that directly impact patient access, provider satisfaction, and organizational growth.

The question isn't whether to pilot new credentialing solutions—it's whether you can afford to pilot them poorly.

Curious for more? Set up a call to find the ideal structure for your organization’s pilot program.