Vendor compliance is a crucial practice that saves you from working with unreliable and unverified vendors. Compliance checks include verifying the financial and criminal backgrounds of vendors to eliminate financial fraud risks and legal penalties. In addition, these checks ensure that the vendor is qualified to fulfill all the requirements and follows all the government laws and regulations. The primary role of vendor compliance is to save you from fines and penalties. Additionally, these checks significantly improve the quality of your organization’s products and services. For that reason, it plays a vital role in the healthcare sector where vendors provide essential products and services.
In the healthcare sector, screening your vendors allows you to hire or work with well-qualified vendors. As a result, your organization gets high-quality goods and on-time services, which translates to better patient treatment. It makes vendor compliance screening an ethical and moral responsibility of every healthcare organization. We call it compliance “checks”, not “check”, because it is not a single process but a combination of multiple checks and screening processes. Due to this, compliance screening or checks take a significant amount of time and effort. A better and more efficient way to deal with this is to hire a trusted compliance support service.
Significant Need for Vendor Compliance in the Healthcare Sector
Vendor compliance is a crucial responsibility of every organization. It helps them avoid legal penalties and provides their customers/consumers with safe and high-quality products. The same thing applies to the healthcare sector, but with more strictness. It is because healthcare organizations are responsible for people’s health and well-being. Vendor screening or compliance checks play a significant role in preventing your organization from working with sanctioned or excluded vendors. The need for vendor compliance in the healthcare sector is explained in the following points:
1. Patient Safety
Compliance screening verifies whether the vendor follows all the strict safety rules and regulations. A vendor who works under the safety guidelines would provide high-quality goods and services. As a result, it notably improves the treatment quality and ensures patient safety.
2. Data Safety
Ensuring data safety and integrity is also a major part of vendor compliance. It gives a clear picture of the data safety measures adopted by the vendor. These checks also ensure that the vendor works under GDPR and CCPA regulations.
3. On-time and High Quality Services
Timely delivery of goods and services is vital in the healthcare sector. With vendor compliance checks, you can verify the vendor’s previous record by talking to their previous clients. It will provide you with a clear understanding of how they function.
4. Avoiding Civil Monetary Penalties
Vendor compliance includes multiple processes and checks in order to perform a thorough investigation. OIG screening is one such process where it is verified whether the vendor is on the List of Excluded Individuals/Entities(LEIE) or not. The identification is essential because working with such excluded entities (including vendors) subjects your organization to severe penalties and fines.
Role of OIG Check and Screening in Ensuring Vendor Compliance
Screening your vendor against the OIG exclusion list is an important part of vendor compliance. Before learning about the role of the OIG check and screening in vendor compliance, let us understand what exactly OIG screening is. OIG, or the Office of Inspector General, maintains a list of excluded individuals and entities called LEIE. They have the authority to add any individual or entity to this list on legal grounds. As soon as the individual or entity is added to the OIG exclusion list, they cannot participate in federal healthcare programs and will stop receiving federal funds. These funds include Medicare, Medicaid, or any other form of state/federal funds.
OIG exclusion signifies that the individual or vendor was involved in criminal activity. There are multiple reasons for the exclusion, and some of the important ones are listed below:
⦁ Involvement in financial fraud related to Medicare, Medicaid funds, or services provided under other federal- or state-funded healthcare programs
⦁ Illegal distribution, manufacturing, prescription, or dispensing of controlled drugs
⦁ Unprofessional or aggressive behavior towards patients
⦁ Suspension of the license due to questionable professional practice
The above-mentioned points are some of the common reasons for OIG exclusion. However, there might be other possible reasons for the exclusion not mentioned here.
Conclusion
Vendor compliance checks and screening are crucial for every organization, especially in the healthcare sector. Building trust among the patients is difficult and requires significant time and effort. Compliance screening helps you select qualified vendors who follow all the quality and safety standards. As a result, your organization will receive high-quality goods and on-time services.
It is worth noting that vendor compliance screening or checks is not a one-time process. Being a continuous and time-consuming process, it can disrupt your workflow and take a significant amount of your working hours. Venops, with automated monthly screening, experts from different industries, and years of experience, makes compliance screening easy and convenient. We are one of the most trusted compliance service partners and have saved precious working hours for our clients.
Your search for a reliable compliance and legal screening partner ends with Venops. In addition to providing you with the best-in-class services, we do it at the right prices. Confused on where to start? Contact us with your queries and questions, our experts will be delighted to help you.
