Next Steps

Efforts continue to streamline the vendor credentialing process, ensure the accuracy of the data that providers demand, and reduce costs for all.

The Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing (C4UHC) – formerly the Coalition for Best Practices in Healthcare Industry Representatives – issued an RFI in November seeking a service provider to work with the Consortium to create a standardized, open, and interoperable individual and company credentialing system.

Currently, the nation’s hospitals use a number of vendor credentialing organizations (and, in some cases, their own staffs) to collect and certify information about the vendor reps who call on them. Not only do their standards (e.g., TB tests, vaccinations, training on bloodborne pathogens standards, timing of background checks and drug screens, etc.) vary, but so does the documentation required to verify that the standards have been met. That means that reps and their companies must submit different information in different formats to multiple vendor credentialing organizations and hospitals.

The Consortium – through its RFI – is seeking a solution that could aggregate, store and allow access to a rep’s credentialing information, says Rhett Suhre, Consortium chairperson. The data would be accurately loaded once by the accountable party and be available interoperatively. As much as a billion dollars annually might be saved across the supply chain, if earlier estimates are accurate, says Suhre.

“For years, either the Consortium or its predecessors have been actively engaging all stakeholders – including providers, suppliers and regulators – in the process of determining precisely what [the] standards [for credentialing] should be,” says Suhre. “Proposed standards have existed for 10 years, and all essentially recommend the same requirements for representatives based on their level of access and potential risk to patients.” Furthermore, “most responsible supplier companies have had policies in place for years prior to the advent of credentialing that ensured that their employees did not pose a risk to their customers or patients.

“The challenge today lies in the fact that, in absence of any top-down standard required by regulators or accrediting bodies, healthcare facilities have implemented varying requirements and multiple processes and systems to document compliance to these requirements,” says Suhre. “Often, the requirements differ in seemingly small ways, such as by requiring a background check within a certain time-period before the supplier’s employee is allowed to visit the site. But those small varying requirements result in duplicative efforts that do not materially improve patient safety, but instead, increase costs and actually increase the risk to patients by creating a system that is prone to error. Only with consistency can there be valuable transparency and accountability.

“The Consortium is not asking for significant changes to most health care systems’ requirements, but rather, is asking them to accept our standardized documentation – data elements – to reduce delays, avoid duplicative requirements, and eliminate waste in the system.”

The key question for the industry has been, How can credentialing be systemized so that the accountable party – in most cases, the employer – can ensure their representatives have met providers’ requirements and then communicate that one time so that everybody is aware of that, says Suhre. “Right now, even if we have the same requirement – e.g., a background check – everybody still requires it on their own form of documentation, whether it’s blue, green, in a PDF, or a copy of the background check summary,” he says. “So even when the requirement is quote-unquote the same, the documentation process is extremely labor-intensive and repetitive. What we’re trying to do is boil down each requirement to the most basic element – e.g., ‘compliant’ or ‘not compliant.’”

The suppliers and providers participating in the Consortium agree that if such a system were set up, “it wouldn’t matter what background check company you used, or what vendor credentialing organization you used, or what process you used to verify the information. We all feel we could boil it down to that data element. Ultimately we’re giving everybody what they need – documentation that the standard has been met.”

While reviewing responses to the RFI, Suhre said that the Consortium has no preconceived idea for the ideal solution or who will provide it. “The goal of the RFI was to cast a wide net in the hopes that interested parties would respond. There are likely many companies with technology solutions that could help with the entire project or various pieces of the overall solution. With the RFI, the Consortium seeks to better understand the technology solutions that are available and refine the specifications in order to issue an RFP for a pilot program in 2017.”

Regardless of who ultimately signs a contract, third-party companies – including vendor credentialing organizations, background screening companies, medical testing organizations, and those that offer training to healthcare industry representatives – “will still be an important part of the credentialing process,” says Suhre.

“The Consortium does not intend to force any stakeholder to switch current relationships or contracts. With standard data elements and a streamlined process, the responsible and accountable party can still work with their current supplier on that piece of credentialing. Over time, we think that the efficiencies gained from standard data elements and a streamlined process will help to drive costs down for all stakeholders by eliminating duplicative requirements.”

For more information on the Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing, visit http://www.universalhealthcarecredentialing.org.

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Consortium members, supporters

Members of the Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing are:

• 3M
• Abbott Laboratories
• Abiomed, Inc
• Cardinal Health, Inc.
• Cook Medical
• GE Healthcare
• Johnson & Johnson
• Philips
• Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc./Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, Inc.
• STERIS Corporation
• Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc.
• L. Gore & Associates, Inc.

Supporters are:

• Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed)
• AORN
• Ambulatory Surgery Center Association
• Capstone Health Alliance
• CHRISTUS Health
• Healthcare Industry Supply Chain Institute
• Mayo Clinic
• Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance
• Strategic Marketplace Initiative