Sanction checks are essential for Healthcare organizations to verify the background of people or entities(e.g. Healthcare Vendors) before working with them. These checks help the organization to identify if the individual/entity is associated with medical or federal fraud. Multiple government lists and databases are used for Sanction screening processes and checks. This ensures a thorough investigation and verifies that the individual or entity has a clean background and is not involved in illegal activities. As a result, it significantly reduces the chances of financial fraud and reputational damage. Healthcare sanction checks also save you from legal penalties and fines. These fines are imposed on healthcare organizations that work with sanctioned or excluded people, vendors, or service providers.
Importance of Sanction Checks in the Healthcare Sector
Sanction checks are significantly needed in the healthcare sector. These checks improve the quality of an organization’s services by hiring the right people and vendors. The importance of sanction screening or checks is explained in the following points:
- Rules and Regulation Compliance to Avoid Fines
- The primary goal of sanction screening and checks is to ensure that the vendors you work with follow all the required rules and regulations. These checks also verify whether the individual is sanctioned or excluded from participating in federal healthcare programs. Working with sanctioned or excluded vendors or hiring such individuals subjects your organization to severe civil monetary penalties. Healthcare organizations can avoid such fines with the help of regular sanction checks.
- Building Trust and Reputation
- Sanction checks ensure that the healthcare organization only works with people and vendors without criminal backgrounds and are not associated with illegal activities. By doing so, the organization ensures that it only hires qualified and well-trained professionals. This improves the overall quality of services provided by the healthcare organization. The improved quality of services ensures that the patients get the correct treatment and this in turn helps the organization build trust and a good reputation among the patients.
- Eligibility to Get Federal Funds
- OIG exclusion checks come under Sanctions screening, and these OIG background checks are essential to maintain eligibility for federal funds like Medicare and Medicaid. According to the law, any organization that hires an OIG-excluded individual or contracts with an excluded vendor will immediately stop receiving federal funds and might have to pay fines and penalties. OIG screening verifies if the vendor or individual is excluded and helps you maintain eligibility for federal funds.
Different Checks and Lists included in Healthcare Sanctions Check
A sanction check is a multi-layered process comprising multiple lists and checks to ensure complete verification. A sanction check includes the following checks and lists:
- OIG exclusion or OIG check
- OIG screening or checks verify whether the individual or entity is on the LEIE (list of excluded individuals/entities). Working with individuals, vendors, or other healthcare service providers present on the exclusion list subjects you to financial penalties and reputational damage. That is why sanction screening checks the OIG database to ensure that you avoid working with such excluded individuals and vendors. With the help of regular and accurate OIG background checks, healthcare organizations maintain their eligibility to get federal funds like Medicare and Medicaid.
- FACIS Check
- Fraud Abuse Control System Information, or FACIS check, provides background information about the individual or entity by checking several government databases. This ensures that the individual or vendor you are working with or plan to work with in the future is not involved in criminal or illegal activity. These criminal activities may include federal fraud, violent behavior, or patient abuse.
- SAM Check
- System for Award Management(SAM) checks help you identify people and entities(vendors) banned or excluded from participating in federally funded programs. SAM checks are crucial for healthcare providers because they save healthcare organizations from penalties and fines.
- OFAC Check
- The Office of Foreign Asset Control, or the OFAC, comes directly under the U.S. Department of Treasury. This strict check verifies whether the vendor or individual is eligible to work in the United States. OFAC checks are crucial to confirm that the person or vendor you work with or plan to work with in the future is not involved in illegal activities.
Why do Healthcare Vendors Require Sanction Checks and Screening?
Healthcare vendors provide essential goods (medical devices, equipment, medicines) and services (testing and delivery) to the healthcare providers. Therefore, these vendors can directly affect the quality of your organization’s services. Working with well-qualified vendors and vendors with a clean history ensures that the organization gets high-quality goods/services. A good vendor will also deliver the goods and services on time, which is extremely important for healthcare services. All this essentially means that having a good and well-qualified vendor is mandatory for Healthcare organizations. It helps the organization to build trust among patients with high-quality services.
Sanction checks or screening ensure that the vendor is not associated with illegal activities and is not excluded from participating in federally funded programs. Screening your vendors helps you in a couple of ways. First, it saves you from penalties and fines imposed on organizations who work with sanctioned or excluded vendors. Second, vendor screening allows you to filter out the vendors that follow all the rules and regulations. Having a vendor who works by the law indicates that you can trust the quality of their goods and services. Due to this, sanction checks also ensure patients’ safety.
Role of an Experienced Compliance Support Service in Sanction Checks
You can perform sanction checks yourself by checking with different databases and lists like SAM and OIG. Sanction screening or checks is a continuous process, as the government regularly updates sanctions and exclusion lists. That is why, these checks take a significant amount of your working hours. Also, due to the involvement of complex laws and regulations, this process requires the guidance of an experienced professional to get accurate results. That is precisely why healthcare organizations seek compliance support services for sanction screening and checks. An experienced compliance service provider helps you avoid legal complications with their accurate screening process. With their help, you can save your time and also avoid severe financial penalties and fines.
Why Choose Venops as Your Trusted Compliance and Screening Partner
Thousands of Healthcare organizations trust Venops for our accurate and fast compliance support services. Our diverse team has experts from different fields including healthcare, finance, sales, and information technology. This helps us perform sanction checks and OIG exclusions screening efficiently. We offer screening and compliance services for vendors and staff members to ensure your organization only hires and works with law-abiding individuals and vendors.
Venops combines modern technology with years of experience to ease the sanction and compliance screening process for our clients. Our goal is to provide you with the best-in-class compliance support services to save your precious working hours. The best part is that all these services are provided at the right price maintaining transparency.