When considering the best background screening partner as a healthcare organization, there are several extremely important factors to consider. Comparing background screening vendors can be a difficult task, but you can remain objective by focusing on selecting competitive solutions that can help keep you compliant with current and emerging standards and regulations. This article discusses three key aspects that are critical for any background screening partner selection process. By taking the time to review these key areas, you can objectively compare background screening vendors and select one that will best meet your healthcare organization’s needs.

Healthcare Industry Experience and Expertise

The healthcare industry is constantly changing, but its challenges are unique and require an industry-specific approach. The number one item on your checklist should be to ensure that your background screening partner has the expertise and knowledge in healthcare. Does your vendor exclusively focus in the healthcare industry, or is healthcare just another part of their overall client base? At PreCheck, for example, we have a proven track record at working with individual hospitals as well as large integrated delivery networks (IDNs). A background screening firm that has extensive experience working with healthcare clients can take what they learn from their existing relationships to benefit all of its clients. A constantly changing complex body of regulations and accreditation standards governs the healthcare industry. Your background screening partner should be familiar with them and offer solutions and processes that will help support compliance and follow industry-specific best practices.

Technological Capabilities

With the latest technology, the days of ordering a background check via fax and waiting on a final report are now behind us. While a background screening partner should be able to accommodate a multitude of ordering methods, they should have the technological capabilities to integrate with enterprise resource planning (ERP), payroll, applicant tracking, onboarding and HR management systems to provide seamless, efficient and secure processing of your organization’s sensitive information.

Your background screening provider should be able to integrate with all of the most widely used applicant tracking software (ATS) platforms in the market today. Should you wish to standardize your background screening processes from HR to your medical staff, they should also be able to integrate with medical credentialing software providers such as Morrisey MSOW, Medkinetics and Cactus, for example. They should be willing to build integrations with any of your software vendor partners to ensure that you achieve the best possible outcomes with these critical processes.

Check whether your background screening partner can handle both your pre-employment qualification requirements as well as your ongoing license verification and board monitoring and sanction/exclusion screening requirements. This limits the risk of sending private identifiers for your employees and non-employed personnel to multiple vendor partners. This also allows you to standardize your pre-employment verification processes with your ongoing verification and monitoring processes. For instance, PreCheck can conduct a primary source license verification as a part of a pre-employment background check and then monitor that license with the primary source on a virtually real-time basis to alert you to any possible license or certification deficiencies or board actions.

Expertise and Thought Leadership

A true background screening partner should help you stay abreast with the latest screening trends, especially any that specifically impact the healthcare industry. At PreCheck, we do not feel that our only responsibility to our clients is to be the best healthcare background screening and credentialing company. We believe that we should also provide information and education about the constantly changing regulations and standards that govern these critical programs. We author over 100 articles per year to keep you and your staff informed about current events and issues that may impact you. We conduct webinars and also provide a quarterly compliance newsletter, authored by our Vice President of Compliance, Vu Do. These are just a few of the value added resources that a background screening partner should offer as part of their partnership.

Selecting a background screening partner can be a complex and lengthy process. By reviewing the three aforementioned key areas, you can take an objective approach in your healthcare organization’s selection process.

Are you currently evaluating background screening providers? Contact us today to learn how PreCheck can tailor our services to fit your existing hiring and onboarding model.