Staffing Industry Analysts finds that the credentialing process for 67% of clinicians takes two to three weeks. Though the time and effort companies exert to protect their clients against liability is valuable overlooking any type of verification check for clinicians puts lives at risk most encounter obstacles to making the process quick, cost-effective, and precise. Outsourcing components of the credentialing process not only manages to improve the vetting process of healthcare professionals, but lowers SG&A costs while increasing placement rates. Though some companies are reluctant to outsource a high liability practice, the proven process of an offshore RPO, like PSG Global Solutions, mitigates the fears of large organizations, including top 10 staffing firms. Here's a look at how businesses ensure their healthcare credentialing processes run like a well-oiled machine:
Create Specialty Roles
Many healthcare staffing companies are specializing their own resources to be able to drive higher efficiency and improve the quality of the candidate and healthcare facility experience. To do this, they often create specialty roles within their credentialing organization, such as the following:
Credentialing Analyst The credentialing analyst is ultimately responsible for the clinician and healthcare facility experience during the credentialing process. They work with the facility to determine their needs, and then build a customized requirements checklist for the specific clinician being onboarded. After, they review the checklist with the clinician and carefully manage any obstacles or exceptions that arise as the clinician undergoes the process of providing the needed documentation and references. After all credentialing activities are complete, the analyst delivers the candidate package to the facility.
Reference Coordinator The reference coordinator is responsible for completing all reference checks necessary to place the clinician. This can include past and present clinical supervisor references as well as employment and education verification. In some instances, reference check automation software is leveraged.
Credentialing Coordinator The credentialing coordinator works closely with the credentialing analyst and is responsible for receiving, reviewing and interpreting, and validating all incoming documents. They are also responsible for staging and compiling all necessary documents to be provided to the healthcare facility in the clinician's credentialing package.
With the specialization of resources, healthcare companies are able to hire resources who are the best fit for the activities associated with each role. In particular, reference coordinator and credentialing coordinator roles are often outsourced, while onshore credentialing resources are moved into credentialing analyst roles.
Enlist the Help of an Offshore RPO
One top 10 healthcare staffing company was initially hesitant to outsource credentialing because of the liability, but a tendency for decreased margins across verticals made the prospect of reducing SG&A too promising to ignore. Outsourced credentialing support could help verify clinicians' references, education, specific certifications, licensure, and work history while also managing all the documents associated with these activities. By choosing to work with PSG Global Solutions, they not only selected the right offshore partner to mitigate their risk, but the end result provided a significant return on investment.
Since PSG implemented our offshore credentialing support services program, our offshore team of recruitment coordinators have helped onboard over 50,000 clinicians and conducted over 200,000 reference checks and verifications of employment to help place those candidates. Here's a look at what else outsourced credentialing support services helped our client achieve:
- Cost reduction of reference checks by over 60%
- Savings of over $1.5 million annually
- Improved turnaround time to complete references by 50%
- Performance improvements of all key metrics beyond historic measures
How Our Outsourced Healthcare Credentialing Delivers Results
Which processes enable companies to save on credentialing related expenses while keeping risks low? Working with our portfolio of Healthcare clients, we have identified specific activities, metrics, technologies, and roles necessary to drive quality improvements, turnaround time, and savings.
Mitigating liability is always one of our primary concerns, so our offshore recruitment coordinators adhere to a specific process that delivers results. We handle all of the calls for reference checks and verifications of employment. We run background checks through appropriate channels and receive e-fax responses to put in a centralized data repository. We set up drug screen events, run license verifications, and file all necessary documents such as state licenses, TB tests, and criminal background checks in the client's system to ensure that all the necessary documents are in place to put the healthcare professional to work.
If there are any exceptions that fall outside of our strict set of rules, our offshore resources escalate all requests to an onshore Credentialing Manager who reviews them to ensure no risk is associated with placing a specific healthcare provider. All of our resources work efficiently and carefully following the guidelines provided.
Beyond that, our offshore resources even take on a range of administrative functions above and beyond to support our clients' recruiting administration processes. We handle:
- Posting jobs
- Timecard auditing and exception management
- Payroll
- Collections support
- Billing and collections
For travel nursing, this can be especially beneficial. Would you rather have a high paid travel nurse recruiter handle activity like posting jobs and packaging candidates for submittal, or a less expensive yet more productive offshore support team? Our resources are used to facilitate a smooth process and provide more cost-effective solutions. Our proactive measures like attributing or labeling of candidates in the ATS allow companies to better search for clinicians based on specific skill sets as well as better allocate those candidates to assigned recruiters.
The thoroughness of our outsourced credentialing process and the ROI our work makes possible has allowed us to consistently scale and retain the clients using our outsourced reference check and verification services. The savings and accuracy have proven a long-term gain for staffing firms as markets tighten and competition steadily rises.
Want to learn more about how to lower credentialing costs and liability? Contact us today.
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