Credentialing is the the process of verifying whether an individual, groups of individual, or institutions meet certain set minimum requirements (regulations) to carry out some tasks or access some areas of restrictions.

Vendor Credentialing for Healthcare Facilities is, therefore, a review process on various vendor representatives, who visit various areas of health facilities, to ascertain whether they meet some set regulations before rolling out their services to the healthcare institutions.

Vendor Credential services by Symplr is an example of a third party service that can be offered to healthcare institutions. On the other hand, healthcare can decide to manage the services themselves rather than offset them to third parties. Some of the benefits associated with these services include:

Tackle privacy and security concerns

Vendor credentialing focuses on providing healthcare institutions with vendor data that forms the basis for access and partnering decisions.  With such vital tools, these institutions are best informed on whom to grant access to their facilities as well as award contracts.

Proactive efforts to avoid vendor-related problems

There are heavy repercussions that arise from healthcare institutions conducting business with vendors listed on Federal or State Exclusion Lists. To avoid such penalties, the institutions make proactive efforts of credentialing their business partners before granting them entry into various parts of their premises or getting into business engagements with them.

Well-structured control of institutional supply chains

The increased complexity within the healthcare industry demands that the most suitable purchases be made by an healthcare organization. To curtail conflicts of interests in the supply chain processes,  credentialing protects against inappropriate behaviour by potential vendors.

It is a healthcare safety measure

Credentialing provides data on past vendors’ criminal and history records. For example, if a vendor’s representative has past police records, he or she will be flagged by the credentialing system. On the other hand, past unethical practices of a vendor might by unearthed by the system thereby cautioning health facilities of their intentions.

Streamlines and cuts down cost associated with requests for proposals

A standardized vendor credentialing system as the ability to save costs associated with request for proposals; for both the vendors and the healthcare facilities. Being credentialed, vendors can take it to their advantage at the time of bid and strike a good bargaining ground.

On the other hand, healthcare organizations will save themselves the costs of reviewing requests for proposals since they already have a clear background of their potential coworkers.

Robust communication infrastructure

Unlike the traditional methods used by healthcare facilities in managing their vendor data, third-party vendor credentialing companies offer unique and more advanced databases.

In addition to secure storage, these systems organize and compile data in such a manner that supports improved decision making processes. They, therefore, provide robust and rapid communication infrastructure in consensus with the current healthcare needs.  

With the current demands in the healthcare industry, exclusive vendor monitoring process should be installed in healthcare facilities. This is regardless of whether they are done with an in-house team, or outsourced to a third-party with much advanced technologies.