ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--While hospitals, nursing homes, doctor’s and dentist’s offices and other direct care providers perform a great deal of due diligence before hiring candidates, they may nonetheless be leaving risky gaps in their screening programs by failing to rescreen their employees or by relying on more fragmented manual research and documentation practices. Such is one of the conclusions from First Advantage’s inaugural Healthcare Provider Background Screening Pulse Survey, conducted in November 2014.
Exactly 50 percent of those surveyed indicated they don’t rescreen their workers at all, leaving their businesses and stakeholders susceptible to risks from any number of criminal convictions, professional sanctions and expired certifications and licenses that may have transpired since their original appointments. Nineteen percent say they rescreen employees annually whereas 17 percent report rescreening every two years.
“Ongoing worker screening is incredibly important for healthcare providers, as they employ people responsible for the life and care of vulnerable persons, with access to controlled substances and with insights into private and sensitive patient information,” said Gary Hinz, vice president of healthcare solutions for First Advantage, a Symphony Technology Group company. “Some of the reluctance to rescreen may relate to incurring extra time and cost, but this process is more efficient than most employers perceive. Modern technology allows lists of employees to be rescreened in batch for a fraction of the cost of the original background check, and many programs allow employers to choose to only be alerted when there’s a red flag with someone’s record.”
The Healthcare Provider Background Screening Pulse Survey also found that 20 percent of those surveyed opt not to conduct child abuse or elder abuse registry searches, despite U.S. states commonly having laws that require healthcare background screening for criminal records involving crimes involving elders or children or placing restrictions on positions where contact with elders or children is involved. And although the vast majority (89 percent) of providers perform Office of Inspector General (OIG) searches, 74 percent choose to handle that internally, a tedious, time-consuming process that requires workers to search one person at a time via the OIG website and manually update their records. In contrast, a qualified, outside screening provider can support high volumes of OIG searches that can be automatically centralized with other pre-hire background checks. Some providers even offer an OIG search that is enriched with additional sources of healthcare sanction data to provide more in-depth results.
“We strongly recommend all healthcare providers check any applicant with direct access to the elderly or children against state-level abuse registries,” said Hinz. “Some may be hesitant to do that, especially if it involves checks on multiple states, but qualified employment screening providers are accustomed to doing this every day and can offer a lot of value to organizations’ patients and brands in a way that requires minimal time and resources on their part.”
First Advantage commissioned the survey to more than 600 healthcare customers using research platform service TechValidate, and received a 10.3 percent response rate. It has produced a special “Healthcare Provider Background Screening Checkup” white paper with more details on the survey and made it available online as a free download.
About First Advantage
First Advantage provides comprehensive
background screening, identity and information solutions that give
employers and housing providers access to actionable information that
results in faster, more accurate people decisions. With an advanced
global technology platform and superior customer service delivered by
experts who understand local markets, First Advantage helps customers
around the world build fully scalable, configurable screening programs
that meet their unique needs. Headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., First
Advantage has offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia and the
Middle East. More information about First Advantage can be accessed at www.fadv.com.
About Symphony Technology Group
Symphony Technology Group
(STG) is a strategic private equity firm with the mission of investing
in and being a partner in building great software and services
companies. In addition to capital, STG provides transformation expertise
to enable its portfolio companies to deliver more value to clients to
retain and attract the best talent and to achieve best-in-class business
performance. All STG portfolio companies are expected to grow through
innovation. STG’s current portfolio consists of 12 global companies with
combined revenue of approximately $2.5 billion and thousands of
employees spread across North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
For more information, please visit www.symphonytg.com.