Imagine this. One of your Nurses is taking care of a patient and the patient passes away. The patient’s family is upset and decides to hire a lawyer to investigate. The first thing the lawyer looks at is your nurses’ credentials and during that investigation, it is uncovered that numerous credentials (think licenses, certifications, immunizations, HR documents, training, etc.) are out of date.
Most companies I know of are first concerned about the patient’s wellbeing but then there is the business side of things. Right there the patient’s family is going to have a solid case against your company and if your insurance carrier must pay out a claim, you better believe 1) your insurance premium is going to rise 2) you might be dropped from coverage finding it harder to get another insurance carrier and 3) your company might be at risk of losing an important contract.
The above scenario really illustrates a real-world event that could have been avoided. If one were to come to you today and ask if your employees all have updated credentials would you be 100% sure the answer is yes? If an auditor from JHACO or another institution came in today could you easily provide a report showing everyone’s updated credentials?
Credentialing problems arises because many organizations are still using paper-based credentialing and haven’t automated credentialing upkeep. Many organizations are still using old file cabinets and at best a spreadsheet to track employee’s credentials and many organizations still leave most credential upkeep to the nurses or allied professionals themselves.
As the makers of Credential Agent software, we see how outdated many of our client’s employees were when it comes to credentials and it is often eye opening to the executives.
Credential Agents premise is simple. Put in the expiring credential dates into our software program that sends out emails both to the staff and employees numerous times about expiring credentials and easily allow one to run reports showing what credentials are about to expire, so that everyone can jump on any issues. By sending out constant reminder emails, you are taking a big problem and distributing the fix to many people making the problem of credential upkeep easier to fix.
The credential agent software itself is very inexpensive and pays for itself with the productivity savings while reducing labor hours.
In the end, is it really about the cost savings or the reduced risk of why it all makes sense to make sure credentials are up to date? No, it is about patient and even employee, safety.