Vendor Credentialing: Genius or Scam?

By: Alaina Anderson, CIS Manager
alainaanderson@cis-partners.com

Sales Representatives in the Pharmaceutical industry aren’t being cut any slack. Thousands have lost their jobs and the trend continues. The new PhRMA Code and various state laws have put restrictions on interactions with healthcare providers. And just recently I heard of another hurdle: vendor credentialing.

As a compliance specialist, I think the concept is great. Basically, to ensure vendors who are entering hospitals have appropriate training (e.g., patient privacy) and vaccinations, a third party vendor conducts this check and provides access to the hospital by issuing identification badges. The hospitals sign up for the program, but to avoid anti-kickback issues no money is exchanged. These programs are funded by the vendors, who pay the credentialing service provider to participate and gain access to the hospitals.

Now if I’m a hospital or a patient, this sounds pretty good. I’d like to know that not just any vendor can enter a patient area without proper training or vaccinations. As a hospital, it is a lot of work to check each vendor representative’s credentials and keep records of them. So a free service is pretty awesome. But some of these vendor credentialing service providers offer a greater range of services than others.

There are a lot of mixed opinions regarding these vendor credentialing services. Some of the individual’s I’ve spoken with indicate “they are a joke; there is no consistency.” Other feedback I’ve heard is some of these service providers require certificates of training, but there is no check as to what the content or scope of the training was.

Sales Representatives, especially who service inner city hospitals, are running into these vendor credentialing service providers. In order to gain access to a hospital they must pay a fee, submit their credentials, and in return they may access the hospital with, of course, no guarantee of business.

To be honest, I don’t think hospitals have the extra cash to sit around reviewing and filing the credentials of all of their vendors. But will hospitals begin to absorb the cost of these programs via a mark-up to the products and services they do purchase?

Regardless, it does seem like good practice to ensure those who enter patient areas are appropriately trained and vaccinated. But maybe we just need to employ some standards to really gain all the benefits this service has the potential to offer.

Sources:
http://www.nci-cg.com/blog/post/Vendor-Credentialing-Distributor-Perspective-Bill-Vitez.aspx
http://www.hpnonline.com/inside/2008-04/0804-CBS.html