Topic: Vendor Credentialing

In November 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) published their requirements regarding COVID-19 vaccine immunization. It mandates that staff among Medicare- and Medicaid-certified providers and suppliers must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of March 15, 2022.
Confirming You Are in Compliance with the CMS Vaccine Mandate
The CMS vaccine mandate only applies to CMS-certified providers and healthcare settings regulated by CMS for health and safety. It does not cover other recipients of Medicare and Medicaid funds.

Healthcare vendor management is an umbrella term for the processes hospitals use to manage vendors, including sourcing and researching suppliers, evaluating pricing, negotiating vendor contracts, ensuring timely delivery of goods and services, credentialing vendors, and controlling the time and location of vendor visits. 
Why Vendor Management Is Important
Vendor management keeps your facility costs low while removing obstacles to delivering mission-critical goods. A good hospital vendor management system makes the vendoring process easier for all involved while encouraging the growth of strategic relationships between vendors and facilities. 

Hospitals require vendor credentialing to manage their supply chains efficiently while ensuring all vendors comply with facility policies. Digitized vendor credentialing cuts operating expenses, helps hospitals control the revolving door of daily visitors, and enhances workforce safety. 
A lack of technology solutions for tracking and verifying vendors is one of the most common pain points reported by healthcare supply chain managers, who often raise concerns about the legal implications of inadequate vendor management systems. Gaps in vendor management also put the physical and virtual safety of patients and data at risk.

Patient trust is one of the end goals of the credentialing process and plays a significant role in the reputation of your healthcare facility. We cannot overstate the importance of trust in healthcare. The doctor/patient relationship relies on the patient’s confidence to receive the best possible care from qualified healthcare professionals. Without trust, patients will seek other healthcare options. 
Understanding the Importance of Trust in Healthcare 
Patient trust — of the lack thereof —  influences all aspects of healthcare,

Locations of care have strict provider credentialing requirements to improve patient safety. Although vendors rarely come into direct contact with patients, hospital vendor credentialing requirements have the same goal. Locations of care that lack a rigorous vendor credentialing process can be vulnerable to legal action should an unqualified vendor gain access to sensitive facility areas, enter the facility without adequate COVID screening, or otherwise negatively impact the patient experience.
For their part, vendors may have concerns with the hospital credentialing process and balk at the idea of providing personal information and other sensitive data,

Vendors are an essential aspect of everything that happens at locations of care, and like any healthcare professional, they must be properly credentialed to act upon their duties. However, whether or not a vendor interacts directly with patients or patient data has no bearing on their status as a vendor. Anyone who is a provider, manufacturer, or supplier at a location of care qualifies as a vendor.
A vendor credentialing system ensures only vendors who meet local and national rules and regulations have access to hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

Do you credential physicians? Clinical contractors? Vendors? Managing any credentialing program can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. It may require a great deal of investment in resources that are not available at every healthcare facility. However, being non-compliant is a risky business and could potentially cost your organization even more. IntelliCentric’s SEC³URE platform gives you all the advantages without the hassle!
Our cloud-based platform verifies and houses practitioners’ credentials as a portal, digital SEC³URE Ethos.

Originally from campussafetymagazine.com
Managing visitors at healthcare facilities can be challenging. Administrators are faced with high volumes of visitors, extended hours of entry, and many first-time visitors who don’t know where they are going.
Although simply allowing visitors to enter freely may be perceived as the easy course of action, all organizations — including healthcare facilities — need to monitor who is entering their buildings and  why. To meet these challenges, some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious healthcare facilities use secure visitor management software to screen,