In the healthcare industry, verifying the financial and criminal background of your vendors is essential. Vendors provide crucial services to the healthcare providers, including medicines and medical equipment. Therefore, a vendor can directly affect the services and quality of treatment offered by the healthcare provider. This brings the need for vendor compliance checks and a screening process. Compliance checks ensure that the vendor you are currently working with or are about to work with has a clean and crime-free background. These checks are also essential to establish a communication platform between organizations and vendors. It helps the vendors to understand the organization’s policies and regulations.
There are two primary benefits that compliance screening and checks provide. First, it enhances the quality of services and treatment provided by healthcare organizations. Secondly, compliance checks and vendor screening help you in filtering out bad vendors. It prevents you from working with vendors involved in criminal activities or financial fraud. Working with such vendors can subject your organization to severe monetary penalties and fines. In conclusion, compliance checks of vendors save you from reputational and financial damage.
How Important are Vendor Compliance Checks in Healthcare?
A vendor can directly affect the services of a healthcare organization. It means that the goods and services offered by vendors can impact patients’ health and treatment. That is precisely why vendor compliance checks and screening are essential in the Healthcare Industry. Regular compliance checks ensure that vendors are working under the legal guidelines. Healthcare organizations are monitored by the government, and they need to follow strict guidelines and regulations. Therefore, they must work with vendors and service providers who operate in accordance with the law. Compliance screening allows you to investigate the vendor’s complete legal background.
In the healthcare industry, establishing a strong reputation is crucial. People do not easily trust others with their health and well-being. Therefore, healthcare organizations need to spend a significant amount of time and effort in building a good reputation. Vendor screening and compliance checks are a major part of this process. It ensures that you work only with well-qualified vendors who follow all security and safety guidelines. As a result, you receive high-quality services on time, which translates to improved patient care. The above reasons are more than enough to know that compliance checks play a crucial part in the healthcare industry.
What is OIG Screening and Why is it a Part of Vendor Compliance?
OIG, or the Office of Inspector General, excludes vendors from participating in federally funded healthcare programs. The exclusion has multiple grounds, including involvement in criminal activities, financial and federal fraud, or patient abuse. Of course, there can be many other reasons for which the OIG can exclude the vendor. Vendor compliance is a combination of multiple checks and processes. OIG screening is a crucial part of the compliance check process in the healthcare industry. It prevents you from working with vendors that are on the OIG’s list of excluded individuals/entities.
Healthcare providers who work with these excluded vendors, whether knowingly or unknowingly, will be subject to fines and penalties. For such healthcare providers, CMPs (Civil Monetary Penalties) of up to $10,000 or more are imposed, along with additional fines. Therefore, during vendor compliance screening, vendors are also checked to verify if they are excluded or not. It helps you avoid financial penalties and fines by filtering out the excluded vendors.
Wrapping it Up!
Verifying vendors is crucial for healthcare organizations and providers. It helps organizations filter out poor vendors and identify well-qualified ones. Working with verified and reliable vendors not only reduces the risk of financial fraud but also improves the quality of services. Vendor compliance helps you with this screening and verification process. Compliance screening is a multi-layered process that combines multiple databases and checks. As a result, you get a complete verification of the vendor’s financial and criminal background. These checks also protect the healthcare organizations from monetary penalties and fines. The healthcare sector must adhere to strict precautions and safety guidelines. Therefore, they should only work with vendors who do the same.
Performing compliance checks independently is a time-consuming process and also requires experience to ensure accuracy. Therefore, healthcare organizations hire organizations like Venops for a trusted and reliable screening process. They are known for their automated screening services, which they provide with transparent pricing.
