The importance of supplier credentialing in healthcare cannot be underscored enough. Credentialing in medicine safeguards the integrity of data for patients, maintains healthcare standards, and assures medical proficiency. ANSI/NEMA SC 1-2020: Supplier Credentialing In Healthcare covers requirements for supplier credentialing in a healthcare environment.
What Is Credentialing in Healthcare?
Credentialing is the process of assessing, verifying, and validating the qualifications of medical professionals to ensure they meet established standards. In fact, this rigorous process of assessing and verifying a medical professional’s qualifications and practice history is one of the first steps that allows a provider to practice. It is a tangible demonstration of a healthcare provider’s medical proficiency. In terms of suppliers, proper credentialing keeps vendors from gaining access to confidential patient information that may not be relevant to their role.
Importance of Credentialing in Medicine
Credentialling ensures that only competent and qualified individuals are granted the privilege to provide care. Credentialing is of the utmost important in healthcare and medicine because it instills trust among patients, reduces potential liabilities for healthcare organizations, improves a facility’s quality assurance practices, and emphasizes the commitment of the medical community to uphold the highest standards of competence and ethics.
What Is ANSI/NEMA SC 1?
ANSI/NEMA SC 1-2020 is designed for healthcare providers and their suppliers to identify the credentials of supplier representatives that visit healthcare facilities. The standard defines a supplier representative as an “individual who provides or sells goods or services for the supplier (these individuals are not employees of the healthcare provider).” The supplier is “the company that provides or sells goods or services to a healthcare provider.”
This American National Standard identifies the credentials of supplier employees (identified as supplier representatives) entering a healthcare provider facility. Its requirements are intended for supplier representatives, but they could be applied to other non-employees if a healthcare provider chooses to do so (e.g., independent consultants, construction contractors, and temporary personnel.)
Security of Patient Data in Healthcare
Patient safety and privacy as well as the security of patient data are of utmost importance to providers and suppliers in the healthcare industry. As such, ANSI/NEMA SC 1-2020 details that supplier representative data should be handled in accordance with applicable laws and with the same care as privacy information for patients, healthcare provider staff/employees, and other affected parties.
What Is Included in Supplier Representative Data?
ANSI/NEMA SC 1-2020 specifies that the following information is used for collecting supplier representative data:
- Employee Unique ID
- Access Tier
- First Name (Given Name)
- Preferred Name (Nickname)
- Middle Name or Candidate doesn’t have one
- Last Name (Family Name)
- Generation (Jr, Sr, II, III…)
- Former Name [Alias]
- Parent Company FEIN
- Date of Hire
- Office Phone/Cell
- Office Email
- Job Title
- Division Name
- Manager First Name
- Manager Last Name
- Manager/Division Email
- Badge Photo
ANSI/NEMA SC 1-2020: Supplier Credentialing In Healthcare is available on the ANSI Webstore.