Vendor Compliance

This week is a guest post from John Caliri, Director of Customer Support for Vendormate.

Document verification and approval are an important part of the Vendormate service for vendor credentialing.   And like most things in life, it’s not as black and white as it first appears.

Many of Vendormate healthcare systems require vendors to print a single-use badge when coming on site.   Badges won’t print if the rep isn’t compliant with hospital standards, including acceptable documents.

To a vendor rep, a rejected document means they can’t do their job.   It prevents them from physically attending a sales call or a consult.  We know that most of the vendor reps whose documents we review are upstanding, well-trained, intelligent, and hard-working people.  We do not want to stand in the way of them making a good living or to prevent them from helping a doctor with a surgery on a loved one.

So our verification team is trained to think of their responsibility as a TSA checkpoint agent would.   Everyone gets examined.   Most everyone gets through.   Only the ones that give reason for suspicion get pulled aside for further inspection.   Even then, most of these are cleared to board.  Our verification team is instructed to treat documents the same way.   Thoroughly examine any documents that are blurry, unclear, or unusual.  Alert the rep to any problems with a document.  Reject if you’re certain the document is incorrect, but don’t ever let one through just because it’s easier.

The verification team is asked to consider “would you bet your job on your decision about a document?”   Because your decision may be betting the rep’s job.