Healthcare IT News - June 2008 - (Page 32)

32 Healthcare IT News ■ June 2008 A recent news report from New York indicated that more than 2 percent of doctors practicing in that state last year landed on the state medical board’s watch list because of substance abuse and mental health concerns. And in Texas, a television station’s check of the status of every licensed nurse in the state revealed that one out of every 20 has a criminal record. Haddad says most healthcare providers check credentials at the time of hire and then take another look two or three years later. He vENdoRS said they don’t perform more regular credential checks because of the cost and time involved in updating each employee’s records and checking them against various databases. Haddad sees the medical industry adopting automated credentialing as pay-for-performance initiatives and medical tourism take root – two areas in which it’s important to know how good one’s healthcare provider is. Medversant’s study reviewed the professional licensing of 24 healthcare organizations in several states between January and November of 2007, using its OneSource technology and tapping into several databases including state license boards, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and Excluded Providers Listing Service (EPLS). In all, 9,597 healthcare providers were checked, of which 7,318 were physicians. Of the physicians, 829 (11.33 percent) were identified as practicing with questionable issues, including 99 (1.35 percent) with a surrendered, www.HealthcareITNews.com suspended, inactive or terminated license due to federal/state sanctions or with no license found. Haddad said Medversant, which recently forged a deal with America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) to roll out OneSource to health plans, will conduct this survey every year. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: creDeNtial 0608 CredeNTIal Continued from page 1 to be more diligent about checking the credentials of those administering care. “Doctors are human beings … and they have issues,” says Matthew Haddad, president and CEO of Medversant, which markets its OneSource credential-checking technology to healthcare providers. “These types of (situations) are happening all the time, and all of these can directly affect patient care.” ● How does your organization deal with healthcare providers with questionable credentials? send your stories to eric.wicklund@medtechpublishing.com sTaffINg Continued from page 31 Taking care of the little things makes all the difference. We connect more providers to more payers than anyone else. But what really sets us apart is all the little things we do for both that make the business of claims and payments so much more efficient. Discover how Emdeon is changing the business of healthcare. Visit www.emdeon.com today. Visit us at Booth 928 at HFMA’s ANI Conference 2008 Simplifying the Business of Healthcare hospitals – Cape Canaveral Hospital in Cocoa Beach, Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne and Palm Bay Community Hospital in Palm Bay – which employ roughly 1,700 registered nurses. Officials say the system saw an 83 percent reduction in contract labor use in the first six months and expects to realize a $3.12 million annual reduction in contract labor, representing an annual net savings of $1.32 million. “We used to spend just a huge amount of time making phone calls each day … and begging people to come in,” said Jan McCoy, vice president and patient care services at Cape Canaveral Hospital, of the hospital’s scheduling woes prior to the Concerro implementation last June. In some situations, she said, hospital officials were compelled to offer double or triple bonuses to nurses to get them to fill needed shifts. With Concerro’s Web-based system, hospital staff can access their schedules at any time and request open shifts for which they’re qualified – including shifts in other departments of the hospital. The open process allows nurses to plan their own schedules and hospital officials to fill shifts faster. McCoy said there’s been a 32 percent reduction in the use of incentives to fill shifts. Other benefits include the elimination of costly outside agencies and traveling nurses to fill open slots, improved communication between nurses and administration and an improvement in staffing management and the posting of open shifts. Graham Barnes, president and CEO of Concerro – formerly named BidShift – said 170 hospitals in the United States now use the company’s automated staffing services, including ShiftConnect and StaffReach. “Concerro promotes a shared responsibility for effective staffing that recognized the commitment of existing employees and helps recruit and retain the workforce in today’s highly competitive labor market,” he said. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: StaffiNG 0608 ● Patient Access Management • Claim Management • Remittance & Payment Distribution • Patient Billing & Payment e ● Connect: eMDeoN 0608 Is automated staffing and scheduling helping your company? e-mail me at eric.wicklund@medtechpublishing.com www.HealthcareITNews.com HealthcareITNews.com www.emdeon.com HealthcareITNews.com

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Healthcare IT News - June 2008

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