Agree with @
catherinetinkey@entmedicalservices.org above. The second you know a new provider has signed a contract, credentialing should begin immediately. You may not misrepresent who provided the services simply to receive payment for services that you would not be paid for otherwise.
Some payors will backdate effective dates. Some will backdate to the date they received the application. Some will never backdate.
Here is my personal recommendation when you have a new provider who is not yet credentialed.
1) Submit credentialing ASAP. I do this before provider has even started. I start the process the day the employment contract is signed.
2) Until that provider is credentialed, you need to make a business decision about what work they provide. I try to maximize the amount of work they provide that is either not paid or billable correctly. Examples of work not paid: postop visits, rx renewals, patient phone calls for triage or results, afternoon hospital rounds after another clinician rounded in the morning. Once they start becoming credentialed, keep an updated list of those insurances and funnel patients with those plans to the new provider. Schedule all self pay patients with this new clinician.
3) If the new provider is an NPP, schedule as much as possible that could be billed incident-to a physician. There are a few rules about this, so make sure you are following them. For example: physician must be onsite, treatment plan must already be determined by physician, etc.
4) If you have any commercial carriers that do not credential NPPs and want services billed under physician, that is another option. Side note: this used to be common, but none of my current carriers want this. Your contracts/carriers could vary.
5) You may decide it is in the best interest of patient care and the practice for this clinician to sometimes provide care that you know you will not be covered under insurance. You could decide to provide the services for free. Create a dummy code in your system that does not get billed to insurance to track the work for your own knowledge (provider metrics, etc.) You could inform patients that the provider is not credentialed and they would be billed for any insurance applied deductible/co-insurance. I would have them sign an acknowledgement of this along with an estimate. Some carriers could require a specific form for this.