Anyone working in healthcare today has too much to do with not enough support. Credentialing managers for medical and pharmaceutical suppliers know this all too well.
They are often “teams of one,” struggling with a mountain of administrative duties yet having no time to complete them. One of their biggest challenges is managing the lists of their firms’ representatives registered with multiple vendor credentialing organizations (VCOs) serving numerous healthcare facility clients. These difficulties often result in inaccurate rosters at healthcare facilities.
Maintaining current lists for reps may seem like a low priority initially. Yet when not handled properly, unintended results of mismanaged and outdated lists can trickle down into some serious situations for all players.
Benefits of a Clean Roster of Medical Supplier Reps
One of the top benefits of having an updated roster is reducing or eliminating the supplier’s liability. If lists aren’t maintained, former employees can gain access to a healthcare facility, placing patient safety at risk. Suppliers, and their insurance companies, could be at risk if an adverse event happens at a facility with employees that have knowingly or unknowingly misrepresented themselves.
Keeping a clean roster of representatives within the VCO accounts can be hampered by many impediments. Some are unintentionally created by the employees themselves while others are generated by the VCOs management processes or even unknowingly by the supplier companies.
Below are some of the most common challenges to roster management and some ideas to help overcome those barriers:
Top Roster Management Challenges and Fixes
Challenge: When supplier representatives use personal email addresses to open their VCO accounts instead of their company’s email address. This error increases the risk of the individual being linked to a company they are not employed by.
Solution: Request an email domain restriction with the VCO, in which only your company’s domain could be utilized to create a profile. A domain restriction could save hours for the admin who would no longer have to go back into the roster and manually correct email addresses.
Challenge: When supplier reps enter an incomplete or a different version of their company’s official name or tax i.d. from what has been established within the VCO account for that supplier. Searching for reps housed in the VCO system under incorrect company names creates another time hurdle.
Solution: Ask the VCO to accept and utilize the supplier’s W-9 tax form when creating supplier rep accounts within that VCO’s platform. For suppliers, submitting one W-9 per VCO could automatically connect all of its reps. The credentialing manager would only have to manage one company in each VCO instead of multiple entities with similar names.
That manager could also expand visibility into rep accounts, increase accuracy, and reduce redundancy of document requests and individual rep submissions. For VCOs, creating an auto-connect capability for uploading a supplier’s W-9 also decreases reviewers’ time spent on duplicative document reviews and approvals. (See related “Standardized Company Names Drive Better Healthcare Credentialing” story on the C4UHC Blog.)
Challenge: Using email addresses or reps’ names to confirm if the reps are still active employees. Your company may have more than one domain, the rep may have used a personal email, or typos can occur in the email address provided. Names are difficult to match confidently as many reps go by something other than their legal name (such as Joe vs Joseph), go by a nickname, change their legal name, or include or exclude middle names/middle initials or surnames or suffixes. Credentialing managers can face a tough decision when they have a high volume of no-match results based on email or based on name which is known to have a high error rate. We don’t want to delete a rep in error.
Solution: Ask the VCO to collect/capture a unique identifier for primary or secondary matching such as an employee number or employee ID.
Challenge: Currently there is no standardized approach on any VCO platform in identifying the present status of rep accounts. This would include definitions of inactive employees, as well as processes for removing inactive or terminated employees. This task becomes even more unwieldy in an acquisition/merger situation with a sudden influx of potentially hundreds of additional names that must be accounted for under tight timelines.
Solution: Ask VCOs to do an annual review of “active” representatives and remove inactive accounts after a predetermined timeframe depending on territory/product/portfolio/visit schedules. Also, enable supplier credentialing managers to deactivate dormant employee profiles on their VCO accounts.
Challenge: Little to no sharing of information about supplier reps across the board. Credentialing managers’ companies themselves won’t share updates on employee rosters, particularly around new hires or those who have left the company. The VCOs don’t disclose full sets of data, often providing just the names and not the email addresses used to open the reps’ accounts. Also, in an M&A situation, companies do not want to share necessary information about employees. In addition, you often have to get the employees’ permission to contact them.
Solution: There are multiple, easy fixes here. First, enabling credentialing managers to access updates on terminated employees at their own companies will have an immediately helpful impact on list management. Secondly, if VCOs provide admins with a corporate dashboard and reporting capabilities, suppliers will have a more accurate, big-picture sense of their accounts and reps.
Challenge: Most reps currently own the capability to open and manage their VCO accounts, not the credentialing managers. Yet email communications from VCOs to those reps about the maintenance of their accounts often go unaddressed.
In addition, the VCO contract provides for a specific number of seats for each supplier company. When the admins don’t have access to data about their reps’ profiles, they can’t see if their account is populated with inactive employees—who unknowingly block access for new employees. A supplier must then purchase more spots to accommodate new employees’ profiles.
Solution: Allow credentialing managers to administer rep profiles and not leave it to the individual reps’ discretion on whether or not they still need an account with a specific VCO.
Implementing even just a few of these steps could yield tremendous labor savings for credentialing managers and help maintain accurate rosters of reps registered with VCOs.
Keep checking back here for more updates and tips on how to minimize patient risk and supplier liability in this constantly evolving process.
You can also reach out to us here at C4UHC for guidance and support on this issue as well as information about the many benefits of becoming a member of our organization.
These Easy Fixes Can Help Medical and Pharmaceutical Suppliers Manage Unwieldy Rep Lists in Vendor Credentialing Organization (VCO) Accounts
Anyone working in healthcare today has too much to do with not enough support. Credentialing managers for medical and pharmaceutical suppliers know this all too well.
They are often “teams of one,” struggling with a mountain of administrative duties yet having no time to complete them. One of their biggest challenges is managing the lists of their firms’ representatives registered with multiple vendor credentialing organizations (VCOs) serving numerous healthcare facility clients. These difficulties often result in inaccurate rosters at healthcare facilities.
Maintaining current lists for reps may seem like a low priority initially. Yet when not handled properly, unintended results of mismanaged and outdated lists can trickle down into some serious situations for all players.
Benefits of a Clean Roster of Medical Supplier Reps
One of the top benefits of having an updated roster is reducing or eliminating the supplier’s liability. If lists aren’t maintained, former employees can gain access to a healthcare facility, placing patient safety at risk. Suppliers, and their insurance companies, could be at risk if an adverse event happens at a facility with employees that have knowingly or unknowingly misrepresented themselves.
Keeping a clean roster of representatives within the VCO accounts can be hampered by many impediments. Some are unintentionally created by the employees themselves while others are generated by the VCOs management processes or even unknowingly by the supplier companies.
Below are some of the most common challenges to roster management and some ideas to help overcome those barriers:
Top Roster Management Challenges and Fixes
Challenge: When supplier representatives use personal email addresses to open their VCO accounts instead of their company’s email address. This error increases the risk of the individual being linked to a company they are not employed by.
Solution: Request an email domain restriction with the VCO, in which only your company’s domain could be utilized to create a profile. A domain restriction could save hours for the admin who would no longer have to go back into the roster and manually correct email addresses.
Challenge: When supplier reps enter an incomplete or a different version of their company’s official name or tax i.d. from what has been established within the VCO account for that supplier. Searching for reps housed in the VCO system under incorrect company names creates another time hurdle.
Solution: Ask the VCO to accept and utilize the supplier’s W-9 tax form when creating supplier rep accounts within that VCO’s platform. For suppliers, submitting one W-9 per VCO could automatically connect all of its reps. The credentialing manager would only have to manage one company in each VCO instead of multiple entities with similar names.
That manager could also expand visibility into rep accounts, increase accuracy, and reduce redundancy of document requests and individual rep submissions. For VCOs, creating an auto-connect capability for uploading a supplier’s W-9 also decreases reviewers’ time spent on duplicative document reviews and approvals. (See related “Standardized Company Names Drive Better Healthcare Credentialing” story on the C4UHC Blog.)
Challenge: Using email addresses or reps’ names to confirm if the reps are still active employees. Your company may have more than one domain, the rep may have used a personal email, or typos can occur in the email address provided. Names are difficult to match confidently as many reps go by something other than their legal name (such as Joe vs Joseph), go by a nickname, change their legal name, or include or exclude middle names/middle initials or surnames or suffixes. Credentialing managers can face a tough decision when they have a high volume of no-match results based on email or based on name which is known to have a high error rate. We don’t want to delete a rep in error.
Solution: Ask the VCO to collect/capture a unique identifier for primary or secondary matching such as an employee number or employee ID.
Challenge: Currently there is no standardized approach on any VCO platform in identifying the present status of rep accounts. This would include definitions of inactive employees, as well as processes for removing inactive or terminated employees. This task becomes even more unwieldy in an acquisition/merger situation with a sudden influx of potentially hundreds of additional names that must be accounted for under tight timelines.
Solution: Ask VCOs to do an annual review of “active” representatives and remove inactive accounts after a predetermined timeframe depending on territory/product/portfolio/visit schedules. Also, enable supplier credentialing managers to deactivate dormant employee profiles on their VCO accounts.
Challenge: Little to no sharing of information about supplier reps across the board. Credentialing managers’ companies themselves won’t share updates on employee rosters, particularly around new hires or those who have left the company. The VCOs don’t disclose full sets of data, often providing just the names and not the email addresses used to open the reps’ accounts. Also, in an M&A situation, companies do not want to share necessary information about employees. In addition, you often have to get the employees’ permission to contact them.
Solution: There are multiple, easy fixes here. First, enabling credentialing managers to access updates on terminated employees at their own companies will have an immediately helpful impact on list management. Secondly, if VCOs provide admins with a corporate dashboard and reporting capabilities, suppliers will have a more accurate, big-picture sense of their accounts and reps.
Challenge: Most reps currently own the capability to open and manage their VCO accounts, not the credentialing managers. Yet email communications from VCOs to those reps about the maintenance of their accounts often go unaddressed.
In addition, the VCO contract provides for a specific number of seats for each supplier company. When the admins don’t have access to data about their reps’ profiles, they can’t see if their account is populated with inactive employees—who unknowingly block access for new employees. A supplier must then purchase more spots to accommodate new employees’ profiles.
Solution: Allow credentialing managers to administer rep profiles and not leave it to the individual reps’ discretion on whether or not they still need an account with a specific VCO.
Implementing even just a few of these steps could yield tremendous labor savings for credentialing managers and help maintain accurate rosters of reps registered with VCOs.
Keep checking back here for more updates and tips on how to minimize patient risk and supplier liability in this constantly evolving process.
You can also reach out to us here at C4UHC for guidance and support on this issue as well as information about the many benefits of becoming a member of our organization.