In the fast-paced and high-stakes world of healthcare, ensuring personnel’s qualifications, integrity, and safety is paramount. Employing a skilled and trustworthy healthcare workforce is a legal requirement and vital for maintaining patient well-being and upholding an institution’s reputation. To achieve these objectives, an increasing number of healthcare organizations are turning to outsourcing for their background check needs.
Flexibility
For many companies, outsourcing employment verifications means giving up control of a critical business function. But this needn’t be the case. A reputable background screening provider can make the process more profitable, less aggravating, and less risky for your healthcare organization without sacrificing accuracy. As healthcare hiring practices evolve, continuous screening is becoming the industry standard. Screening beyond the time of hire is necessary to comply with regulations and avoid civil monetary penalties. To keep your team compliant and safe, it is best to implement monthly checks for exclusion lists and sanction databases in addition to pre-employment background checks. When looking for a healthcare background check partner, research and consider the experience of the providers you are considering. A specialist supplier will deeply understand the regulations and complexities in the sector, making them a reliable and trusted partner to support your organization’s recruitment processes. They will also understand your needs and be able to deliver cost savings for your business.
Time
Facilities must conduct healthcare background checks for several reasons: to protect patients, ensure compliance with licensing and other regulatory requirements, maintain a safe work environment, uphold the facility’s reputation, and minimize liability and civil penalties. These checks typically include national sex offender searches, criminal history checks, searches of state and federal sanctions and exclusion lists, education verifications, and drug screenings. Due to limited staff and time, conducting these checks in-house can be challenging for healthcare organizations. Additionally, keeping up with the volume of names that must be checked routinely can take time and effort. This is where outsourcing market contractors come in – they have the resources, technology, and partnerships to enable a robust background check program with minimal in-house resource investment.
Additionally, outsourced partners can leverage economies of scale by focusing on these specific services rather than managing all tasks in-house (as many healthcare employers must do without outsourcing). This means they can get it done faster and at a lower cost.
Availability
The sensitivity of healthcare employees makes high-quality background checks vital. Employees deal with patients in life-or-death situations and have access to sensitive information such as private medical records. Hiring a risky candidate can have devastating consequences. Healthcare organizations must comply with federal guidelines and standards the Joint Commission sets to protect patients. This often requires extensive work involving a multitude of resources. It also requires frequent updates to keep up with changes in laws and regulations. This entails running criminal and national databases and contacting schools, previous employers, and licensing boards. It can take up valuable time that could be better spent focusing on patient care. Healthcare-specific background check tools streamline the process. They offer features such as sex offender searches and education and employment verifications that validate experience claims. They also include a federal exclusion search to identify candidates who could be barred from receiving Medicare or other government funding due to a criminal record. In addition, they allow a hiring manager to set a specific increment of time—seven years is the most common—to screen out records that may not be relevant for that particular position.
Scalability
Scalability is a business principle that describes the ability of systems or products to adapt to increased demand without being overwhelmed. This concept can be applied to a computer, IT system process, data repository, or software code. From a technical standpoint, scalability involves having hardware or software that can handle a larger size in volume—without any pause, refactoring, or other structural changes. This could be related to several factors, including the maximum stored data, the maximum number of users, and the maximum transaction handling capacity. From a practical perspective, scalability can save healthcare companies money in the short and long term. For example, selecting a scalable technology solution can help organizations only purchase what they need now and avoid purchasing features that might be useful someday. This approach can also protect initial investments, such as a healthcare organization’s investment in an in-house dashboard that can be adapted to the company’s new needs by adding additional visualization programs rather than building an entirely new system from scratch.
Cost
Outsourcing partners leverage economies of scale. They don’t need to staff full-time employees, purchase software licenses, and pay for office space and benefits. That allows them to offer healthcare companies a much more affordable rate. Outsourcing healthcare background checks can save costs by freeing in-house resources for more critical tasks. For example, outsourcing workers’ compensation claims frees nurses and doctors to focus on providing patients valuable and often life-saving services. A recent study analyzing workers’ comp claims data from five acute care hospitals found that outsourcing resulted in lower injury rates and days lost per employee for cleaners than a control group that didn’t outsource. This resulted in higher productivity for the hospital. This is because cleaners could return to their core duties faster and have more time for patient care.
