Strict regulatory compliance laws require healthcare providers and organizations to ensure patient safety and deliver superior care. Healthcare vendors and service providers are also subject to these compliance regulations. This is because they supply drugs, medication, and other critical services to the organizations, directly affecting the quality of their services and treatment. Therefore, accurate vendor compliance is mandatory to maintain high standards in this strict industry.
While it may sound straightforward, ensuring accurate compliance checks can become quite complex. Factors such as organizational size, complex laws, and the involvement of multiple government databases make it difficult to cover every aspect of the checks. Furthermore, vendor screening or compliance checks without proper planning can lead to the wastage of time, effort, and money.
In this blog, we will provide you with important tips on how to ensure accuracy during compliance screening and avoid financial penalties and fines.
Crucial Tips to Perform Accurate Vendor Compliance Screening
Compliance checks and screening are only effective when done accurately. However, complex laws and regulations, combined with the number of vendors per organization, make it challenging to achieve accurate results. Therefore, we have compiled critical factors to ensure that accurate vendor compliance checks and screening process:
1. Standardized the Vendor Onboarding Process
Establishing a standard onboarding process has a direct impact on the efficiency and accuracy of compliance checks. It not only helps with risk management but also enables you to improve efficiency and speed over time. Also, having a transparent vendor onboarding process will help the vendors understand your requirements more clearly.
2. Verify Vendor Qualification
Checks for quality certificates, qualifications, and their experience with healthcare organizations. The availability of quality certificates and licenses is a clear indication that the vendor offers high-quality goods and services and can be trusted with patients’ well-being.
3. Perform Regular Checks
The major challenge with vendor screening and compliance checks is the need to perform them on a regular basis. For example, a vendor who was not on any sanction list during the previous check can be on the latest one. As a result, one-time vendor screening and compliance checks are unreliable.
4. Document the Whole Process
Keeping data logs of the entire compliance check process helps increase process speed in the future. Proper documentation of the compliance process also plays a critical role in audit checks.
5. Use Official Databases and Resources
When verifying the presence of vendors in sanction lists, ensure that you do so against the official database. For screening vendors against the Exclusion list OIG, you can visit this link. Similarly, you can find links to other exclusion databases and sanction lists.
6. Integrate Automation in the Screening Process
In the screening process, automation equals speed and accuracy. The introduction of an automation software tool enables a significantly faster screening process with fewer chances of human error. Therefore, experts recommend using reliable software tools to automate the screening process.
7. Hire the Right Compliance Service Provider
Performing vendor compliance checks yourself can be a significant time and resource drain for your workforce. Moreover, without expert supervision, there is a risk of data discrepancies. This can be costly in the long run. A proven solution for this scenario is to hire a compliance support service provider. This will help you get the crucial expert guidance, saving your time and money. Additionally, the accurate results will ensure that your organization works only with well-qualified vendors.
Why Accuracy and Precision are Necessary During Compliance Screening?
We have understood the crucial factors to ensure accuracy during the compliance checks. But what is the true significance of going an extra mile for accurate compliance checks? Look at the following points for the answer:
- Patient Safety
- Accurate vendor compliance checks directly translate to patient safety, as they ensure the reliability of the vendor. Whether it is medical equipment, drugs, medicines, or waste management, healthcare vendors are responsible for providing critical healthcare services. Consequently, a reliable vendor will ensure the timely delivery of goods and services without compromising the quality.
- Reducing the Need for Re-evaluation
- Inaccurate screening results can be costly, as you will need to repeat the entire screening process. As a result, you will end up spending more time and money to complete the screening process. This can be prevented by performing an accurate screening process.
- Preventing Fines and Penalties
- Working with sanctioned vendors not only has adverse effects on patient safety but also subjects the healthcare organization to financial penalties and fines. Accurate vendor compliance management provides you with comprehensive background information on both potential and current vendors. Consequently, it allows you to avoid excluded and sanctioned vendors.
- Financial Transparency
- Accurate compliance checks and screening of vendors also involves the CMS Open Payments Program. The open payments program reports provide a transparent record for the payment between the healthcare organization and the service providers.
- For Good Cybersecurity Practices
- Patients share their personal data with healthcare providers, and it is the responsibility of these providers to protect this data. Vendor compliance policies bound vendors from sharing any crucial patient data without the organization’s permission. To ensure such good practices, you need to work with reliable vendors that pass the screening and compliance checks.
- Receiving High Quality Goods and Services
- Accurate checks. It is essential to work with certified vendors who adhere to global quality and safety standards. As a result, partnering with these vendors will help you receive high-quality goods and services with on-time delivery.
Concluding Note From Venops
Vendor compliance screening and checks are crucial for a healthcare organization. However, the involvement of complex laws means that performing an accurate screening process can be challenging. Moreover, performing screening on your own is efficient and may lead to resource wastage. Venops provides the ideal solution with automated screening and compliance services. At Venops, we offer you a wide range of services, including:
- Automated monthly screening
- Daily Screening
- AdHoc Screening
- Quick and reliable services
- Highly accurate screening, with an expert’s supervision
- Additional vendor screening services without extra charges
It’s time to upgrade your screening and compliance services with Venops! Contact us to know more!
