Healthcare Background Checks

Moving through 2017, employers and human resources leaders can continue to expect changes to their background screening process and policies.  The new year is always an ideal time to take stock of emerging best practices and any newly passed regulations that may impact  an employer’s hiring and screening practices.

While some of these topics may not be new, PreCheck’s Vice President of Compliance Vu T. Do recommends that employers and HR leaders closely consider the following three tips:

At the start of a new year, I enjoy looking back at the previous year’s blog posts and learning what our readers considered the most noteworthy articles and topics from the PreCheck Blog.

At a glance, it’s clear our readers highly favored lists in 2016, with 60 percent of our top ten articles from last year comprising of lists. Healthcare HR trends, background check and I-9 compliance, and social media were among the most popular topics from the past year.

This week, we announced the results to the inaugural PreCheck Pulse Healthcare Employment Screening Trends Survey. The survey highlights how healthcare organizations handle background checks and other staff screening practices. The nationwide survey conducted online from September to December 2015, garnered responses from over 800 healthcare professionals and the results are now available as a downloadable report.

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016, PreCheck hosted a complimentary webinar covering background check compliance essentials for employers. PreCheck’s Vice President of Compliance Vu Do and Corporate Counsel Kate Vessey discussed the latest background check best practices for employers in an informative 60-minute learning session.

Earlier this month, a nationwide investigation by a Georgia newspaper uncovered a serious problem that the healthcare industry is facing with disciplining doctors. Doctors are a unique case when it comes to enforcement. The nation has a shortage of physicians and they are too valuable to our country for medical boards and agencies to simply discard their license when there are offenses. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s (AJC) investigation, however, reveals that sexual misconduct among doctors in our nation is more pervasive than we thought.

A new law has expanded the requirements for criminal history checks on employees and owners of home health care and personal services facilities in Indiana. As of July 1, 2016, employers must complete an expanded or national criminal history check on all new hires, and no employee without the check can serve patients in their residences. Owners are also subject to the criminal history check requirement and conviction for specific offenses prohibits anyone from owning a facility or providing services to a patient in his or her home.

Most healthcare employers rely on a rigorous background check program in order to safeguard their patients and staff. Background screening is an important part of the hiring and employment qualification process, especially in a safety-sensitive industry such as healthcare. Unfortunately, there are a few background check loopholes in healthcare, particularly for nurses and physicians, which makes having a strong background screening program much more important.

Most health sciences colleges and allied health clinical education programs utilize background checks for screening students, but selecting the right type of background check is just as important. For institutions and clinical program coordinators, selecting a background check that meets the requirements of the clinical sites where students will complete their clinical rotations is key. The most important thing to remember is that background checks come in different flavors, so it’s important to understand the difference between the various types of criminal searches that are available.

Background check practices in schools have received a fair amount of attention in the last few years. Indiana, for example, is among the 12 states and the District of Columbia to recently receive an F for the screening of their teachers, according to an investigation by USA Today with IndyStar.

Employers and human resources leaders have seen several changes to their background check process and policies in the last few years. Today, the increasing number of class-action lawsuits and ever-present threat of data breaches have prompted employers to review their current screening practices and apply proper safeguards to protect patients and their sensitive healthcare information.