Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing, Inc.
The Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing. Inc. (C4UHC) announced its suggested guidelines for tuberculosis (TB) testing for medical suppliers providing healthcare products and services to care facilities.
In 2022, 90% of hospitals and clinics required credentials for medical industry representatives entering their facilities, according to NMS Health. Fulfilling these requirements costs millions of dollars and labor hours because most of those healthcare centers don’t adhere to one national set of vendor credentialing standards such as the ANSI NEMA SC-1 2020 American National Standard for Supplier Credentialing in Healthcare.
A recent government report on medical providers’ progress in adopting electronic health records (EHR) reflects how establishing standards is a challenge throughout the healthcare ecosystem, not just in vendor credentialing of medical suppliers.
The Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI) is an incubator project of The Center for Supply Chain Studies working to achieve patient safety and credentialing goals for the entire pharmaceutical industry that will be familiar to C4UHC members.
To help reduce healthcare centers’ time and effort necessary to comply with quality standards, The Joint Commission is currently reviewing which standards should be “permanently retired” once the COVID-19 public health emergency ends, reports Fierce Healthcare.
We’re proud to share that the Consortium for Universal Healthcare Credentialing (C4UHC)’s mission to establish the ANSI Standard for Supplier Credentialing in Healthcare is featured in the article “Vendor Credentialing: Best Practices and Guide” on NMS Health’s The Occupational Blog.
COVID-19 impacted every function and protocol of the U.S. medical industry as it struggled in the early days of the pandemic to procure personal protective equipment (PPE) and administer wellness screenings for all visitors. C4UHC and healthcare vendors, providers, regulators, accreditors, trade associations, VCOs, and other stakeholders met to address some of the issues by updating the ANSI/NEMA SC1–American National Standard.
Vendor credentialing requirements at healthcare facilities shouldn’t be so difficult. That’s what Jim Ziegra, HCIR Credentialing Manager at Abiomed, wants healthcare facilities to know about the often cumbersome validation processes that take up valuable time for both hospital staff and medical supplier representatives.
Although vendors rarely come into direct contact with patients, healthcare facilities that lack a rigorous vendor credentialing process—such as one supported by the C4UHC—can be vulnerable to legal action according to a recent blog post from IntelliCentrics.
COVID-19 only intensified the burnout healthcare employees were already feeling in all aspects of their jobs from patient care to administrative requirements for key functions such as vendor credentialing for healthcare providers and medical suppliers.
