Vendor Compliance

The 2009 trend was that the vendors, who once questioned whether to participate or stonewall vendor credentialing programs, have accepted the new reality.   Certainly, there is still some grumbling.   There are some who spend more time trying to avoid programs than participating.   But for the most part, vendors have settled down.

Vendors will now look for ways to leverage vendor programs to their advantage.  

It will start with universal policy preview and responses.   One of the scariest aspects of healthcare vendor credentialing to vendors is that the sales reps, the feet on the street, will be asked to make corporate level commitments.    Vendor-side legal counsel shudders at the thought.   The impact to Business Associates of HITECH and its new HIPAA breach notification policy is just one example of the type of event that raises red flags.  (We touched on this issue earlier. )    Look for vendors to ask the credentialing outsourcers to provide the ability for management to preview policies before the rep even sees them.   Based on the preview, corporate will dictate how the individual rep responds.

Vendor appointments become a sales management tool.    Hospitals are very interested in when sales reps are on site for a variety of reason, not the least of which is cost control.   Short-staffed hospital materials managers want visibility into sales rep activity to avoid off-contract sales.   

But just as the hospital reviews who visited, the vendor sales management will become interested in tracking where their sales reps have been.    Is the rep visiting the customer regularly?   Calling on the right person?   Getting the appointment records from the vendor management system could serve as a rep activity and efficiency indicator to the sales manager.  

In short, expect a rising number of vendor credentialing admins in 2010.   These admins will be tasked with the same centralized management of vendor credentialing programs as on the healthcare side but on the supplier side.  

Vendormate is already seeing these predictions at work.   Our vendor services team is establishing direct relationships with a number of supplier side credentialing administrators, giving them advance alerts to new hospital programs and changing policies.    The vendor adminitrastor dashboard feature of Vendormate Credential Central lets the administrator download all policies from every Vendormate hospital and healthcare system, verify an individual representative’s credential standing, and view to the credentialing status of all of their sales reps through Vendormate Credential Central.

This is just the begining.    I’m sure creative suppliers, looking for an advantage and a better way to meet their customer’s needs, will think of even more in the coming year.