Health care credential management is a critical pursuit for hospital and other administrators in the industry, helping to ensure that those providing care to patients are qualified and have the right skills. This process has also historically been a time-consuming activity in need of improvement.
There are a few ways organizations can streamline their credential verification and management. Here's a few things administrators should know about changing and emerging strategies to credential management:
1) It's time to leave spreadsheets in the past
As Target Recruit noted, credential management – as well as the management of potential employment candidates, payers, providers and third party relationships – used to be carried out within simple software like spreadsheets and Microsoft Outlook. While this worked at the time, it's now a very "archaic" process, as Target Recruit noted. What's more, it's also a time-consuming way to organize and access critical data. And with so much human interaction, spreadsheets are prone to mistakes, which take even more time and resources to correct.
"Washington state's dataset saved health care employees 17,000 hours through the open sharing of credential data."
One thing is for sure – there are much better strategies available for health care credential management, and now is the time to leave spreadsheets and other time-consuming, manual processes behind.
2) Verification is just as important as organization
Credential management isn't just about organizing educational, internship, training and license information into a platform – administrators must also be sure that they verify credentials. Some larger health care institutions have credentialing committees that contact the source to verify employees' credentials. However, smaller organizations don't always have the resources to dedicate a team of individuals to this activity.
Now, the industry has shifted the credential verification, supporting a more streamlined approach through searchable data banks. The National Practitioner Data Bank, established in 1990, is just one of these resources. Additional strides are being made in this arena as well – Washington State recently published an open source dataset of health care provider credential details to make it easier for administrators to verify. Socrata noted that Washington state's dataset, in particular, saved health care employees 17,000 hours – the equivalent of eight full-time workers – through the open sharing of credential data.
3) A workforce management platform could hold the key
One of the best ways to support credential management is with a workforce management solution that was created with the specific needs of the health care industry built right in. A solution like this helps simplify credential management, providing key automation and links to Joint Commission, state and regional credential data.
In addition, a robust workforce management platform offers tailored reminders to ensure that all verification deadlines can be met. In this way, nothing falls through the cracks and credentials are consistently and properly managed.
To find out more about streamlining your credential management process, contact the experts at BlueSky Medical Staffing Software today.
