As a healthcare staffing agency, great credentialing of candidates is one the most valuable services you can provide clients.
It is too often viewed as a necessary evil rather than an insight into the workforce and a hedge against future liability. After several years as a software implementation specialist for BlueSky, I have witnessed three major errors in procedures made by healthcare staffing firms. Unfortunately all three issues occur in the Credentialing/Quality Assurance phase. Hopefully your philosophy doesn’t play into one of these deadly sins.
“My Recruiters are the Quality Assurance Team too”
Allowing recruiters to credential their own candidates is the most unspoken, yet deadliest of sins in healthcare staffing. It is understandable if a small staffing firms employees must multi-task and handle some recruiting and credentialing tasks together. But the assumption is if the firm is that small, there is constant oversight by ownership. For larger firms, if you are a recruiter, hopefully you won’t take offense to what I am about to say. Recruiters recruit for pay and are generally rewarded for volume within the context of the minimum requirements. I have personally seen recruiters cut corners during the credentialing process just to get a placement.
Raise your hands if you have heard the following statements:
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“It’s in the mail.”
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“You didn’t get my fax?”
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“I don’t have any missing documentation.”
Remember two things, this placement, which hasn’t been fully credentialed, represents your organization. Is this the type of candidate you want to be known by? Also, the practice of recruiters doing both jobs opens your company up for a huge liability. If you cut corners now, what will it cost you later?
“I can do it ALL by myself”
One of the most common complaints I hear from potential BlueSky clients is they have outgrown using spreadsheets and Microsoft Outlook to manage credentials, schedules and candidates. Many of those business owners will also go on to tell me that they outgrew this process long before they got their company out of infancy stage. Creating your business processes from scratch and consequently managing its growth through spreadsheets is time consuming.
The bottom line is… if your company is not using a recruiting and credentialing software, then your company is not being as productive as it can be, especially if you have more than one person in your business. In this industry speed to placement is key and with this inefficiency you are probably losing a lot of candidates to your competition.
“I don’t need a credentialing strategy”
Another thing I have learned through the years is every healthcare staffing agency is different and has slightly different processes. When is the last time you asked yourself, “what can we learn from our own process?”
Take a look at your current process and look for:
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Common mistakes your Credentialing team makes
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Documents your healthcare professionals usually fill out incorrectly
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Where delays coming from
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Cutting costs but not quality
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And ask, “What can my candidates do for me?”
Use this knowledge to master a great credentialing strategy and up your game. Find tools that help streamline your business and learn to anticipate problems before they happen. Trust me, you may have to spend a little money to make even more money, but that investment would be well spent.
If your company can avoid any of these costly credentialing mistakes you will not only have better quality placements, but your company will see an increase in your bottom line.
What are you going to do to change your credentialing strategy?
