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Leading Practices in Healthcare Credentialing – How to Transform Credential Management and Record Keeping Into a Competitive Advantage
103 Plays1 year ago
In the fast-paced world of healthcare staffing, where nurses are in high demand and turnover is soaring, placing a provider into a new work assignment can be challenging for any healthcare staffing agency. The burden of collecting and verifying anywhere between 40 to 60 separate credentials has created a deluge of paperwork, hindering an agency's ability to effectively engage and retain nurses. To address these pressing issues, join Christopher Ryan, Avionté's Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, as he speaks with seasoned industry professional, Therese Gopaul-Robinson, Owner and President of The Therese GR Company. Together, they’ll explore innovative strategies to revolutionize healthcare credentialing and create a faster, more convenient experience when placing medical talent.
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Transcript
Challenges in Healthcare Staffing
00:00:00
Speaker
To place a nurse into a new work assignment, a healthcare staffing agency may need to collect and verify 40 to 60 separate credentials. With high turnover and an endemic shortage of nurses, the rapidly growing field of healthcare staffing is drowning in paperwork. With a race to engage and retain more nurses, how can we leverage technology to make the hiring and placement of nurses more efficient? Today, on the Aviante Digital Edge,
00:00:30
Speaker
We will take a deep dive into the challenges of healthcare credentialing.
Aviante Digital Edge Introduction
00:00:39
Speaker
Welcome to Aviante Digital Edge, a podcast series that focuses on the digital transformation of staffing. I'm Chris Ryan, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer for Aviante. When it comes to workforce credentials, there are two fundamental problems. First, your records need to be spotless.
00:01:00
Speaker
For certain positions, let's take, for example, an ICU nurse operating in the state of Florida. You need to collect, verify and maintain 40 to 60 separate credentials as a requirement of employment.
00:01:14
Speaker
And many of these credentials have expiration dates that have to be monitored and maintained by both the individual and the facility that employs them.
Importance of Credentialing in Healthcare
00:01:24
Speaker
And it's not just the risk of penalties or lost customers. An unqualified healthcare worker can put patient safety at risk. But assuming you master compliance, there is a second challenge. Healthcare institutions expect outstanding reliability and service.
00:01:42
Speaker
and healthcare talent are in short supply. So healthcare staffing agencies are competing for the attention of the same limited talent pool of smart, busy physicians and RNs. If you can't create a fast, convenient experience when working with medical talent, they may choose to work with another agency down the street. And with that, I'd like to introduce today's expert guest, Therese Gopal Robinson.
00:02:10
Speaker
who has worked the better part of two decades in healthcare employment and now works directly with healthcare staffing agencies to improve productivity and quality, streamline workflows, assist with joint accreditation and leadership development. And she's very passionate about the importance of healthcare credentialing. So Terez, thank you for joining us.
00:02:32
Speaker
Let's get into our conversation. So tell me a little bit, why are credential practices so important? And I know we've touched on that a little bit, but, you know, what is so important about credential practices to the entire process of healthcare employment?
00:02:47
Speaker
Chris, it's so incredibly important to our healthcare system because at the end of the day, it's assuring that patients are cared for by qualified individuals. And so if you're in credentials, you're in the business of caring for patients. That's the way that I look at it.
00:03:04
Speaker
There are so many things that go into qualifying and validating these folks that it is a field that needs to be not only appreciated, but respected. Because at the end of the day, again, whoever is at the bedside,
00:03:20
Speaker
Before they could get there, they had to be credentialed. And in order to be credentialed, there are just so many steps that need to happen, so many boxes that need to be checked to really ensure that they can do what they say they can do. So if I understand you correctly, even when you were acting in an administrative position at a hospital and you were simply managing credentials,
00:03:46
Speaker
Effectively, you were assisting in the delivery of high quality patient care. Is that fair? Yes, that's 100% accurate. And I would shout that from any rooftop if you gave me an opportunity to do that. The thing is, a lot of people have no idea what goes into ensuring that they're seen by physicians or ensuring that they're seen by nurses. And so absolutely, as a secretary in the medical staff services,
00:04:10
Speaker
department, I was responsible for ensuring that those patients got the gear that they needed through credentialing and ensuring that if it was a nephrologist, if it was some sort of specialized physician, that I validated those qualifications and I followed the trail from the very beginning to the end to ensure that again, that physician could get to the bedside and care for those patients.
00:04:39
Speaker
And, you know, I guess as I think about it, you had said once that for every hour you spend looking for a qualified healthcare worker, you may spend five hours working on their credentials. Is that right?
Credentialing Process and Complexity
00:04:55
Speaker
Oh yeah, or more than that, or even more than that, because it just, again, it's not just about checking boxes and collecting a piece of paper and filing it away in a cabinet somewhere. Credentialing takes...
00:05:07
Speaker
critical thinking. Credentialing takes sleuthing. Credentialing takes the ability to identify personalities in the folks that you're working with. So yes, it takes a minimum, a minimum of about five hours just to get from the beginning to the end of the process because it's not just collecting a piece of paper, stamping it, and just putting it in a file.
00:05:31
Speaker
Talk to me about the sleuthing process. I'm intrigued now. If you're a detective and you are looking through somebody's credentials, what is it that you see? I mean, isn't it enough to say, I'm licensed, I have the correct license, it's up to date. What do you see as you're looking into the record?
00:05:49
Speaker
So the basic things, right? Do I have a license? Did I go to school and so on? But I'm also looking for the experience of this clinician. So how long were they at different facilities? If it was a physician, how long did they maintain their privileges? If they were a nurse, well, were they a staff nurse for a long period of time? Were they in traveling?
00:06:13
Speaker
For a long period of time, it wasn't just really short stints. I'm looking for longevity. I'm looking to see, you know, have they been consistent in their careers? Because if you start seeing where I had privileges here for six months, I worked here as a staff nurse for three months and then here for one month, unless you're a locum.
00:06:32
Speaker
or a travel nurse, that's a red flag to me because I want to see, I want to get deeper into, well, why weren't you there for longer? Why did you have to move? Did you move from one state to another? Because those are red flags for me as a credentialing person to dig in a little bit deeper. Interesting, interesting. So you're looking for
00:06:52
Speaker
Did they go? Did they stay? Did they persist? And have they been doing it for a while? And then presumably you're also looking for, are they constantly updating their credentials and updating their knowledge as they go? So what makes healthcare credentialing so challenging today and particularly for healthcare staff and companies?
00:07:15
Speaker
So, and there's a few things so that what makes healthcare credentialing so challenging is just, just to share complexities of, of the process, because in healthcare staffing in particular, we are not just credentialing a registered nurse.
00:07:31
Speaker
We are credentialing a registered nurse who is going into the ICU, who is going to a facility in a particular state, and that facility may have specific requirements. So in order for me as a healthcare staffing organization to credential that one ICU RN, I have to account for the facility requirements
00:07:51
Speaker
If they are part of some sort of an exclusive agreement with an MSP, I have to account for the MSP's requirements. Then I also have to account for state requirements because every state has different things they want for different clinicians based on specialty. So I have to account for the state requirements. And then if it is that I am joint commission certified or the facility is, there's certain things that I have to meet to maintain my certification.
00:08:17
Speaker
as a healthcare staffing organization. And oh, by the way, as a healthcare staffing organization, I should have my own minimum requirements. So just for me to credential this one nurse, I have to account for multiple requirements from multiple different areas.
00:08:35
Speaker
Just out of curiosity, how long does it take for somebody to master the art of health care recruiting and credential review? I assume this isn't something you can learn overnight. It's got to take practice.
00:08:48
Speaker
No, and it's an ongoing thing, honestly, Chris. I mean, you can certainly be an expert in specific areas, but it's an ongoing learning opportunity when you're in healthcare recruiting or healthcare credentialing because, you know, we always joke and say no two files are over the same. Even if you're credentialing for the same client, it's never the same because there's just so much happening.
00:09:10
Speaker
around us in healthcare staffing that we have to constantly kind of always be aware of the things that are changing around us and stay on top of those things. So you can be the expert, you can be a credentialer, you can be a recruiter, but you're constantly learning in healthcare staffing. So all of the things that you're talking about, there's an art to credentialing. There's deep knowledge and deep learning in order to recruit in it. No two files look quite the same. So there are a lot of exceptions.
00:09:39
Speaker
And right now, the healthcare staffing industry is supposed to be growing 5% to 6% compound annual growth through 2030, rapidly growing fields in staffing. And yet, it sounds to me like credentialing is one of those things that is very challenging to scale and standardize.
00:10:00
Speaker
And as I think about medical professionals, it's one thing to be compliant, but if you're trying to hire a nurse or a doctor, among other healthcare professions, presumably these are busy people. They're already in demand. There's already a major labor shortage.
00:10:19
Speaker
These are smart people. They don't have a lot of time. And my guess is that going through all the hassle of paperwork and credentialing, you would think that somebody would never want to take another assignment, you know, simply to avoid all the paperwork involved. So I guess what I'm wondering is.
00:10:37
Speaker
Is it possible, is it really possible to maintain compliant credentials without putting off your healthcare customers with slow turnaround or calling up by a healthcare professional 20 times in order to get the right credentials or even driving your own internal associates to drink?
Improving Credentialing Efficiency
00:10:55
Speaker
I mean, if a recruiter is dependent, if their income is dependent on placing people and
00:11:02
Speaker
you know, every day is a slog to get the credentials so they can just simply place one person at work. How do you transform this? And, you know, how do you get it to scale? I mean, is it possible to make credentialing more friendly?
00:11:16
Speaker
Oh yeah, for sure. I work with many different organizations and the ones who get it right. So, you know, I think it's, it's all about what your, what you deem is the priority. And so what I see a lot in the, one of the biggest mistakes I see in healthcare staffing is the organization spends a lot of time, money, and just expertise on.
00:11:40
Speaker
the attraction phase of the process, meaning we want to be attractive to potential clients and clinicians. So it's all about bringing them into the funnel. Where we tend to fall off a little bit is once we've attracted them and they've committed to us,
00:11:56
Speaker
We haven't spent enough time building out the back office. We haven't spent enough time understanding what happens after they say, yes, I'm your person. Let's do this. And that's normally when things kind of fall apart. So when I work with organizations and the organizations that are doing it right.
00:12:13
Speaker
they give just as much energy to the back office as they do to the front office. So it's not just about attracting the right client or the right candidate. It's about, you know, going into a marriage, right? And committing to making sure that it's a good experience all the way to the end. So it's absolutely
00:12:32
Speaker
You can do it if you take the time to understand what that clinician's experience through the process may be. If you take the time to understand and respect that A, that clinician has about five people, other organizations calling them every single day.
00:12:50
Speaker
Okay. You have to understand that and respect it. And so you have to, you have to create a process that is seamless for them and that they can rely on and trust. If you nail that, and that's all about your back office, if you nail that, then yeah, you can totally scale this and you can make credentialing, I dare I say, a fun experience for everyone involved.
00:13:12
Speaker
Hmm. So, so, so let's go into a little more detail around this, you know, we, you talk about the front and the back office. And so it sounds like you got up a very persuasive recruiter. They, they get the attention of a healthcare professional and the healthcare professional has a good initial reaction. They walk in the front door and suddenly they discover that the house needs paint, that the kitchen is dirty, that, you know, the bathrooms are dirty and so on. And.
00:13:42
Speaker
And I don't know if that's quite the right analogy or you know, it's like, you know, it's like dating someone and then you decide to marry them and then you find out that they have a 200 credit score and you can't buy a house. You can't do anything, right? So it's all the same thing for sure. So take it, take us through a typical
00:13:59
Speaker
healthcare workflow that you see today. Not a good one, but just what you see today. Let's pick on a hospital in Florida, say it's in Jacksonville, Florida for fun, and they're looking for temporary nurses. They call up your agency and they're looking for an ICU nurse.
00:14:19
Speaker
What is the typical ordinary workflow look like today in most cases? I mean, what kinds of credentials do you need to collect? What does a typical flow look like today versus what it should look like?
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, one thing to remember is if, if that hospital in Jacksonville is calling us, it's because they're probably in dire straits or getting really close to it. Right. So urgency is, is a big one. So they're going to call and say, I need 10 ICU nurses to start by July 1st. Right. I need that. It needs to happen. And so typically what happens.
00:14:56
Speaker
is, you know, this is good stuff, right? So we normally have some sort of client services, account manager, based on where you are, they're called different things, but they're the ones that are really going to take that information from the client, and then they're going to communicate that inwardly. So they'll say, okay,
00:15:12
Speaker
Jackson and Florida Hospital. They need these 10 ICU nurses. They need them by July 1st. And so we open up these job orders. We get them posted everywhere. We're doing all of this stuff. We get our recruiters on the ball. They're calling people that they know. They're maybe out there looking to maybe attract other people that they don't know. But everybody gets the message. We need to fill these jobs.
00:15:36
Speaker
Right? Now, normally, typically at that time, the facility would say, listen, we want this nurse to have at least two years of ICU experience. They must be licensed already in Florida because they don't have time to wait for licenses. And they must have, I don't know, an ACLS and a BLS. Let's just say so. Typically the facility will give some basic things.
00:15:57
Speaker
So the recruiter will take that piece of paper and start recruiting for it. And the recruiter, as you said, it's all about the volume and the numbers. Let's get as many people in to the interviewing process as possible in the hopes that we get 10. That's the ultimate goal. And so that process can take anywhere from a couple of days to a week or so, depending on just what that internal pool looks like.
00:16:23
Speaker
And so once we go through the interview process, the nurse will be offered a position or not. And then if they choose to accept, now we say, okay, you've now accepted the position. Now we take you over into credentialing. So let's think about the fact that maybe that whole process took us about a week to a week and a half, right? So now we're a week and a half in, and we have maybe five weeks or so to credential this nurse.
00:16:50
Speaker
So now the credentialing team will get that nurse, but normally typically at this time is when we start to really talk about credentials. So the credentialing team is going to say, okay, what else does Jacksonville hospital need? And so at that point.
00:17:05
Speaker
we're looking to get the client credentials list, right? The facility requirements. Depending on how proactive that facility is and how engaged they are, we can get it same day. It may be a couple of days. So now, in credentialing, we're trying to, if we're trying to do our jobs well, we're trying to keep this nurse on the hook, right? We're trying to keep the nurse engaged. Now, mind you, that nurse has probably working right now.
00:17:35
Speaker
The nurse probably is getting phone calls from other agencies and that nurse probably has other things going on. And so the longer we wait to communicate that, the harder it will be to keep that nurse engaged. And so whenever we get the client's requirements, now we will communicate that to the nurse. So I'm sorry, I just, I have to butt in for a second. What you're telling me is that it's almost like a two step.
00:18:01
Speaker
You've offered people the job, but you haven't really offered them the job. You've just gotten to first base as it were, but now you have to, you have to figure out how to finish the credentials. So, you know, provisionally you've been hired, but in reality, you not really, not really until you get it. So, so I mean, why wouldn't you want to have all the credentials at the front end before you start telling people they're hired?
00:18:28
Speaker
Well, you know, based on who you talk to, they have different reasons why they don't do that. First off, they don't want to overwhelm the nurse. I hear that a lot. Well, we don't want to overwhelm the nurse with saying like, we need these 30 things, right? We want them to be interested in the position, feel really good about all the things that we're offering, and then they get flipped over to the credentialing world. That's one.
00:18:48
Speaker
The other one is what I tend to see a lot, and some people may agree and some people may not. But from a recruiting perspective, the perception is, well, we're not the experts in credentialing. And so what we are the experts in is relationship building and really getting people through the funnel. So when we start talking about the intricacies of credentialing, that's not our wheelhouse. And so we really don't want to have those conversations on the front end. And again, I don't want to scare my potential candidate off.
00:19:15
Speaker
by talking about this laundry list of things that they need to collect once they agree to be placed with the Jacksonville facility.
00:19:25
Speaker
You know, sometimes the recruiter is wasting their time and wasting the credentialing department's time if they don't ask some questions up front. So it sounds like there's a mix between how much do you ask and when, you know, and how do you make sure that that's a smooth process that is both friendly to the candidate, but also respectful of everyone's time.
00:19:45
Speaker
So you're going through this process. How long does it all take before you can verify that somebody actually has the right credentials and how often do people wash out after they've been recruited, but before they've gotten through the credentialing process?
Credentialing Challenges and Solutions
00:20:01
Speaker
Yeah. So, okay. So I'll tell you ideally and typically. So ideally I would say if you talk to any healthcare staff, your organization, they will say the goal is we want to turn things around within seven business days or so. That's the ideal.
00:20:17
Speaker
Typically, it's more like 30. And then in terms of the percentage of nurses who jump ship before we get them to gold, right now in the industry, it's right at about 25%, if not more, depending on the organization. So on average, we lose about 25% of those nurses to competitors because, again, of the fact that it's either a speed thing or the credentialing process is too confusing.
00:20:45
Speaker
or I'm having to go and get things done multiple times. There's just, it's a lot of frustration with the process because of the fact that we, we as an organization, whoever the we is, we didn't take the time on the front end to fully understand what would be required of the nurse. So 25% of the time they jump. Now that's not the only reason, right? There are other reasons for sure. Personal reasons and all these things, but typically in the industry it's right at around 25% of the time. It's not more depending on the organization.
00:21:14
Speaker
And is it fair to say that credentialing is really, it's all part of the same onboarding process that you do in healthcare staffing. So you've got a 25% drop off where of a hundred people who have been offered a job, only 75 of them make it to the other end. Are there any variations in how this works between say,
00:21:42
Speaker
a travel nurse versus locum tenens versus pergium or more broadly in allied healthcare where I know the credentialing is a little bit simpler. But what do you see across the different variations or the different flavors of healthcare staffing?
00:21:55
Speaker
Yeah, so they're definitely different. So I would say for the travel nurses and the travel allied health folks, I would say that those are the fastest turnaround times and the quickest needs. So it's all about speed when we're talking about travel nurses and travel allied health professionals.
00:22:12
Speaker
nine times out of 10, if you're working with a healthcare staffing organizations, they live in the space of Monday starts. Every Monday we've got tons of people that we're trying to push to make sure that they start on time. And so that's every Monday. So just imagine being on that Monday treadmill every single week. Every Monday we have, you know, hundreds of people starting. And so it's a very fast paced environment.
00:22:35
Speaker
Now, as you flip to the locum side, it's, I like to call it hurry up and waits. So when we engage a locums and we say, all right, we want you to go to that Jacksonville facility and you're going to start, you know, we normally don't even have a start date because we have to hurry up, meaning we get, you know, Dr. Chris, we get his credentials, we're verifying, we're qualifying, we're credentialing. But then once we close out the file and we flip it to the facility, now we wait. Because when you're credentialing a locum tenant,
00:23:05
Speaker
You're not dealing in Monday starts. Now you're at the mercy of the facility credentialing committee that normally only meets once a month, you know, the first Tuesday of every month. And then once they get approved there, then they go to their medical council committee, which normally meets, you know, the second Thursday of the month. And then after that, they have to go to some sort of a board that only meets the third Monday of every month. And so there's a lot of hurrying up and then waiting on the locum side versus the travel nurse and the travel allied side.
00:23:35
Speaker
where it's this constant treadmill of Monday starts. Now the credentialing between RNs and allied health, theoretically allied health are quote simpler but they can be more complicated because of the fact that unlike RNs you're having to deal with well is this allied health person is it do they have a
00:23:56
Speaker
Do they need a certification? Is it a national certification? Are they going to a state that requires a license, yes or no? If there's not a national certification, how much school do they need? Do they need an associate? It's just this whole, you have to triage for that allied health professional versus with a registered nurse. Yeah, it can be more intense, but it's very easy. Do you have a license or not?
00:24:21
Speaker
So there's some variances there and I sometimes think that allied health professionals credentialing them are a little more complicated due to trying to better understand that. Yep. Yep. So, so let, let's talk a little bit about the ideal credential process. Now you, you've said.
00:24:42
Speaker
Very often healthcare staffing companies have built out the front office. They're very good at attracting people, but they haven't thought as much about the management of credentials, the back office process that presumably is associated with.
00:24:56
Speaker
the actual act of onboarding and credential maintenance. If you were building a healthcare staffing company from scratch, or for that matter, it could be, it doesn't have to even be healthcare. It could be any place where you need to keep high quality credentials for both legal and compliance reasons, as well as for, you know, placing the right people with a customer. I mean, how would you go about designing that process
00:25:22
Speaker
What would it look like? If I could design the process, I would say that my opinion is this credentialing starts at the very beginning. So when I work with organizations, what we do typically is we ensure that at the very beginning, so during that client onboarding process, there is a credentialing representative.
00:25:45
Speaker
on hand and so they're part of that client onboarding process meaning hey client in Jacksonville you want us to fill your needs so we have our credentialing person we're going to talk credentials with you as part of the onboarding process to ensure that we understand what it is that you need from us and you understand our process as well so we want to make sure that we're setting you up for success from the very beginning so
00:26:10
Speaker
Typically, if it were up to me, that would be kind of when the credentialing process starts, because right then and there we know, okay, yes, we can meet those requirements. So once we have those jobs posted, another thing that I would love to see is higher engagement, or let me rephrase that, not higher engagement, but
00:26:29
Speaker
a higher priority for us to educate our recruiters they need to know enough to be dangerous they don't need to know enough to get at the desk and credential someone but they should know enough to be dangerous and so typically what i want recruiters to know and fully understand are the time consuming credentials so.
00:26:49
Speaker
Recruiters should know, hey listen, if I recruit you, Nurse Chris, to this hospital, there are some things that are time-consuming. So let's talk about that on the front end. So what I mean by time-consuming is, let's say for example, this facility requires a two-step TB process.
00:27:07
Speaker
So what that means is you must have one TB within the last 12 months, and then we're going to need to do another one within 30 days of your start. Hey, Chris, do you have a TB that's current, right? And that's an opportunity for Chris to say, oh yeah, I just did one last month. Great. So we have step one already taken care of. When you get to my friends in credentialing, they'll help you walk through the second step.
00:27:29
Speaker
Hey, Chris, this facility, since you're, I don't know, let's just say you're an ER nurse, this facility requires a TNCC certification. That's a trauma certification to work in this ER. Do you have that? Because that's a time consuming credential. It takes a couple of months to get that certification. So, Chris, do you have that?
00:27:50
Speaker
Actually, no, I mean, I've been in ER for 20 years, but I don't have one. All right, Chris, you know what? I want to set you up for success. I have some other facilities that I'm recruiting for and ER nurses. Let's look at those instead because, you know, I want to get you working as quickly as I can and I want to set you up for success. So let's look at these other facilities versus this one.
00:28:09
Speaker
So I think it's important for our recruiters to know enough to be dangerous and also kind of really tap into the time consuming things. Time consuming, the things that are going to take us a very long time, that if the nurse doesn't already have it, it may not be the right opportunity for us.
00:28:27
Speaker
So, you know, as I think about this, one of the, one of the principles I hear you saying around credentialing is do it once, do it right and do it upfront with the customer, understand their credentials right away. Yep. And make sure that the recruiters have enough of an understanding that they can identify the handful of critical credentials that are most difficult for placement and use those as part of the upfront checklist.
00:28:56
Speaker
And so if you were able to do those things, then right there, you're already ahead of the game. Yeah, because then you set your credentialing friends up for success, because once that nurse has flipped to credentialing, first, we're not blindsiding anyone. So, you know, you've talked about the time consuming things on the front end. So when nurse Chris is now talking to the credentialing specialist,
00:29:20
Speaker
Most of what the credentialing specialists will talk about is not news. It's not a surprise. We prepared Chris. He knew that he was going to be in for a pretty intense process. And so now you've set that credentialing process up to be more successful where the credentialing person could just kind of dive right in and set Chris up and start scheduling things and getting things on the way so that we could get things turned around very quickly, which will be great for Chris as the nurse and great for the facility as well.
Enhancing Staff Retention through Credential Management
00:29:49
Speaker
So talk to me a little bit about how credentialing can help with talent retention. When I think about the challenges of managing your own personal, professional credentials, I have to guess that if one staffing agency did a better job of assisting medical professionals with their credentials and making sure that they were current, they were up to date, they were in one place, they were ready to go,
00:30:15
Speaker
I might keep working with that one staffing company to the exclusion of others if they make my credentialing process easier. So talk to me a little bit about that and what you've seen or what might work.
00:30:28
Speaker
All right, so I love this question. Do we have two hours to talk about this piece? So here's my perspective on this. It falls into three buckets. And the first one, you hear people say this a lot. It's about the people that you hire into these roles. A lot of times, organizations deem credentialing as a data entry.
00:30:52
Speaker
position and that's not what it is, right? It takes very specific skills to be an amazing credentialing person. And so ensuring that we hire folks that either have that background or have some of those transferable skills for credentialing is key. So we have to hire for fit. And then we also have to focus on the onboarding process and the orientation and training process for these folks.
00:31:17
Speaker
to make sure that they understand and again appreciate and respect the role that they have. The second thing is their systems. So what are the systems like? What platforms are we working off of? What ATS do we have and so on? Because if we
00:31:34
Speaker
Take the time to build out or collaborate with different softwares that are more user friendly for the credentialing person. It just makes things a lot more seamless. So, you know, I like to think of, we have our credentialers doing a lot of hunting, but they're not hunters, they're gatherers.
00:31:53
Speaker
So let's take out the hunting piece and let's really set them up for success through systems, hiring for fit, onboarding resources, so that they can do what they're supposed to do, which is gathering information, validating information, and qualifying information. So if you focus on your people and your systems, and then you tighten up your processes. And so when I talk about processes, it goes back to when we onboard the client, we make sure that someone in credentialing has a seat at the table.
00:32:21
Speaker
When we send our recruiters off to recruit for the position, we've educated them enough so that they're having good conversations. So that we, when that person has flipped on to credentialing, they can now use the seamless systems and they've been trained and they have the appropriate resources so that they can credential and do it in a way that really keeps that nurse connected. And you're right. I mean, the credentialing folks are just not, you know,
00:32:49
Speaker
working on paperwork, they are a representation of the organization. They are the partner in crime, so to speak, to that nurse during the credentialing process. And oftentimes they're also representing us to the client because they're having some critical client conversations as well during the process. So if we want to keep our nurses engaged and sticking with us, and if we want our clients to be satisfied,
00:33:13
Speaker
investing in that team and investing in the resources and the processes to really make sure that they're successful. If we nail that, we will nail it. Yeah, you know, it's funny as you were talking about this, it seems to me that
00:33:28
Speaker
If you were able to automate credentialing a little bit, that the credentialing specialist potentially could be of great value to the talent in helping to provide career counseling and professional development or give them guidance around upskilling. And I have to believe that, you know, if a nurse is interested in certain fields or practicing in certain areas or regions,
00:33:51
Speaker
that having access to a credential specialist who can help them navigate and navigate quickly so they can become qualified to work in those areas would be very valuable. I mean, do you see any confluence between professional development and what the credentialing specialists are doing?
00:34:08
Speaker
Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity there. And it goes back to let's move them away from being the hunters and let's keep them in the gathering space. It's also about technology as well. So if we utilize technology in a way that sets up that credentialing person to do more gathering than hunting, that's way. If we have everything there and it's ready to go, that's one thing. And then as far as allowing that credentialing person to really be connected to that clinician,
00:34:35
Speaker
If they're doing less of that stuff, there's more opportunity to connect with the clinician, and there's more opportunity to really be seen as an expert in the field, as a mentor to them, and as a bridge between them and the facility, not only just during the initial process, but on an ongoing basis, because credentialing doesn't stop when the nurse goes to the facility.
00:35:00
Speaker
Credentialing and that relationship with the credentialing team is an ongoing relationship throughout the tenure with the organization.
00:35:08
Speaker
Yeah, so there are a couple of things I'm curious about now. If you're running a healthcare staffing company and you're focused on talent retention, do staffing agencies have the technology they need to quickly search through a talent database and select the people who have the right credentials? Is that something that they're able to do fairly well or is that sometimes require automation that is only partially available?
00:35:34
Speaker
I would say it's available. I think many organizations do have the ability to do that kind of upfront job matching and recruiting of talent. And that goes back to exactly what I said earlier, which is for the most part, many organizations have done a really great job of the attraction piece, right? What you're talking about is a front office piece. There's a lot of software and technology out there to help that.
00:36:00
Speaker
be a seamless process so we're doing pretty well on the front office in terms of attraction and job matching and finding the right people that have you know the on paper anyways right the credentials to match whatever job it is that we're trying to fill but but you're saying wait the the pieces that fall off in the back office what exactly are you referring to get
00:36:22
Speaker
Let's get into that. Yeah. So what I mean by that is let's go back to the credentialing piece. So let's say that, you know, I, again, let's go to that facility in Jacksonville that needs an ICU nurse and I'm using my software and my technology to job match, right? So my job matching technology, I'm just naming it anything.
00:36:43
Speaker
sees that nurse Chris, based on what I see out there, could potentially qualify for this job. He's an RN. He has ICU experience. He has a license in Florida. Check, check, and check, right? Because normally when we're doing that job matching in the front office, I like to call it kind of like the pre-qualification process. You know, if you bought a house, you know, you pre-qualify, right? You give them a piece of paper and we say, yeah, you look pretty good on paper. But then,
00:37:10
Speaker
Once Chris accepts the role, he now falls into the credentialing space, which I like to call the underwriting of healthcare staffing. And so where there's an opportunity in technology is taking those conversations that we should be having on the front end, right? So Jacksonville facility.
00:37:29
Speaker
Tell us all the things that you require okay you require these 18 things. Let's go ahead and build that out into our system let's go ahead and connect these credentials to the Jacksonville facility in our software in our technology so that way, the moment that Chris
00:37:47
Speaker
is placed with that facility. When the credentialing team gets that file, when they open up Chris's file, we already have this laundry list of documents that are required that are already there for us because of the fact that we built it into the technology. And so now when the credentialing person opens up Chris's file, they will see a bunch of red because there's these 18 things that are needed for Jacksonville facility that's already preloaded into Chris's profile.
00:38:16
Speaker
So now instead of me hunting, meaning, can I get the credentials list? Do I have the client requirements? It's already there. So now I can begin immediately with my gathering process, which is communicating with Chris, focusing on customer service, focusing on turnaround times, and also quality.
00:38:37
Speaker
And just out of curiosity, why couldn't we bring some of the important, you know, what you're framing as back office credentials? Why couldn't they be selected against in the front? Or is that where there's pushback that, oh, we're making the process too unfriendly for the candidate at the front end?
00:38:55
Speaker
Well, A, we're making the process too unfriendly on the front end, but also too, we want to keep the experts doing what they're the experts in, right? And so recruiters are experts in recruiting. They're not experts in credentialing. And so again, sticking to the handful of things that are time consuming, giving them enough to have those conversations, but you don't want to give them so much that
00:39:19
Speaker
They're spending an hour on a phone call with a nurse trying to go through credentials. That's not their job. That's not their role. Their role, it's all about volume, right? Their role is to get people attracted, get them to apply, move on to the next. Because as you know, in the recruiting world,
00:39:34
Speaker
Just because we apply it doesn't mean I'll even get to the interview. So the more people that we can push through that funnel into the interview process. Yes. Once we pre-qualified them, they've got a license, they have the minimum experience. We need to get as many people in there. So we don't want our recruiters spending hours talking about credentials, but we want them.
00:39:53
Speaker
Set it up in a way that they've had some high-level conversations to set that nurse up so that that nurse knows, okay, I'm going to have to do these things and I feel pretty confident going into the credentialing process. Yeah. So it almost sounds like the way your ideal credentialing process, you design credentialing as a fast follow-on.
00:40:15
Speaker
The recruiter sets up the expectations, a tentative offer may go out. And now is the moment where you really want to forewarn and prepare the medical professional. Here's what we need. Here are the time consuming things. Let's set it up, follow up, get the credentials on board. And then presumably once you have somebody's records in place over time and there are known
00:40:41
Speaker
there are known entity, then you can continue to place them using their existing credentials, which you already have on
Aligning Teams for Better Staffing Operations
00:40:48
Speaker
file.
00:40:48
Speaker
Right. And then I would also, um, ensure that we, if we're, if, if we're a big enough organization, I always recommend to align our client services folks. So that's account managers align them with our recruiters. So instead of kind of having a, you know, an open pool where everyone's recruiting for everything, align them with clients, because what you're doing is you're putting your recruiters in a position to become the experts on the clients as well.
00:41:14
Speaker
so that they know if I am recruiting for Jacksonville facility and I'm doing it consistently and over and over, I'm going to get pretty savvy in terms of what Jacksonville's turnaround times are, you know, the people who work at Jacksonville, what they require of our nurses. And so when I'm recruiting for that position, I'm like the expert and I'm just like moving and shaking and I'm just getting people in and
00:41:37
Speaker
There's a higher likelihood that the nurses that I submit to those jobs are going to get those jobs than say someone else. So I, I'm curious, do you ever see people who, who.
00:41:51
Speaker
design integrated service teams. For example, you would have your client manager or sales representative, your recruiter and a specialized credentialist on a single service team working with a customer as a way of organizing as opposed to a credentialing department or recruiting department, a sales department.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah, I absolutely love when I see that, and I do recommend that as well, because if they're all part of the same cohesive team, it does a lot of things. So not only does it make us the expert in what our clients want, but it creates a team. Oftentimes when you go into healthcare organizations, a lot of times when healthcare or healthcare staffing organizations are struggling,
00:42:33
Speaker
It's because we have the credentialing department over there. We have client services over there and we have recruiting over here. And so they don't feel like they're part of a team. They feel like, okay, they're over there and that team's over there. So if we put everyone and we assign a pod of people to a client, what you will find is we're the experts. We rely on each other. We trust each other and we all want to be successful. Another thing I'll call out, some people may agree, some people may not.
00:43:03
Speaker
One of the things that I see that healthcare staffing organizations struggle with a lot is that our credentialing team and our recruiting team and our account management team, they're not speaking the same language. And what I mean by that is here's an example. It's Friday. Today is Friday.
00:43:18
Speaker
And we have Monday starts if nurse Tourez is canceled from that start for Monday, right? Because of whatever the story is the recruiting team. That's an upsetting thing, right? So the recruiters are upset. We lost that. We lost that candidate. Our account managers are probably upset because while we didn't meet the need of our client credentialing.
00:43:40
Speaker
Maybe not so much because they have a laundry list of things that they have to do and so many other candidates that they're working on. They're probably kind of feeling a little bit of relief because that's one less person I have to work on. I'm just going to say it happens. But if we're part of a cohesive team, we all see that loss the same way.
00:43:59
Speaker
And we all want to be successful together. And so if we, if we're the experts, then we just, it just makes more sense if from end to end, not only internally, but from end to end, from the client perspective, the client knows every single time I need a nurse, I'm always going to talk to Chris. And I'm always going to talk to Therese and Betty, because that's my account manager, my recruiter and my credentialing person. I'm always going to do that. So now.
00:44:25
Speaker
you tend to have a very good relationship with your client and dare i say you could probably even have conversations where they will give you some leniency in other areas you know when you need it and so having those cohesive internal teams that are clients centric and the client expert. You can't lose you can't lose.
00:44:45
Speaker
So two quick questions and then we probably should wrap up. Sure. So one, if you could wave a magic wand, what is the one new technology that you would like to see to support the entire healthcare staffing workflow? If I could wave a magic wand, I would love to see that healthcare staffing technology on a whole recognizes the importance of credentialing.
00:45:09
Speaker
and recognizes that if we can nail that piece of the process, so like I mentioned before, if we can make sure that agencies have the ability to connect requirements for states and clients to their clinicians in the software, in the technology, so the moment that we place that nurse,
00:45:33
Speaker
magical things happen in the technology that immediately sets up the credentialing team for success. That would be just an incredible win. I mean, the amount of redundancies that we would eliminate just by doing that and the time and effort we talked about the five hours before, right?
00:45:50
Speaker
the time and the effort that will impact, you know, that would impact revenue, that would impact quality, that would impact productivity, and then it would impact patient care because you will get those clinicians to bedside faster and you will get the best clinicians there faster. So if I could wave my magic wand, that would be what it is. Just make it easier for our credentialing folks to do the jobs that they want to do.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah. Last question. What lessons do you think a non-healthcare staffing company can take from the solutions that are now in development for healthcare staffing and the practices within healthcare staffing?
00:46:29
Speaker
I think the biggest lesson is in healthcare staffing, it's all about speed, but it's also about quality, right? So you can't have one without the other in healthcare staffing specifically. So it is one of the fastest.
00:46:46
Speaker
you know industries in the world and so it's all about speed it's all about getting there faster but you cannot do it without having that that quality and so ensuring that you build out your products and your processes to allow for both right so we have to allow for both and we have to give enough focus on both i think if we can do that and if if there's nothing else that they can take is recognizing that
00:47:15
Speaker
We cannot have speed without quality. We cannot have quality without speed. Healthcare staffing, they're well on their way to nailing it in terms of both of those. And so if that's one lesson, I would say that they could learn from healthcare staffing is that it's you have to get there fast, but you have to get the best person there as quickly as possible. Thank you, Therese, for your taking us on a deep dive of healthcare credentialing because credentialing is a back office process.
00:47:42
Speaker
It is often overlooked as part of the total service experience provided to healthcare professionals and their employers. Thank you also to our audience for being here today. We encourage you to subscribe to our Aviante digitalized series to hear more episodes related to the digital transformation of staffing. And don't forget to visit our website at aviante.com. And until next time, this is Chris Ryan with Aviante.