Keeping Current with Compliance in Acute and Post-Acute Care

Featured, Healthcare Staffing

Labor compliance programs exist to ensure your healthcare facility follows both federal and state laws. In fact, a successful compliance program can protect your facility against fraud, abuse, waste, and potential litigation.

As a healthcare staffing partner for hospitals, medical clinics, and facilities nationwide, Medical Solutions can help you navigate the complex landscape of healthcare compliance. However, if you’re still managing your facility’s compliance program alone, we’d like to share with you the following compliance guidelines in both acute and post-acute care settings:

Background checks: Like healthcare facilities, no two states are alike. This is especially true when it comes to state laws and background checks. For example, only 36 U.S. states have laws requiring healthcare workers to undergo a background check. The other 14 states highly recommend screening candidates prior to employment, but they do not require healthcare employers to do so. And while most acute and post-acute facilities conduct screenings, those background checks may vary in thoroughness. For example, some states have fingerprinting requirements while others do not. At Medical Solutions, our compliance team utilizes a rigorous multi-point screening process that includes verifying all residences of a potential candidate for the last seven years. You can learn more about it here.

Licenses: Do you know which states participate in the NLC or Nurse Licensure Compact? Thanks to the compact, it can be much easier to place a traveling healthcare professional at your facility. If you use Medical Solutions’ Quality Assurance Team, they’ll also track and ensure a Traveler stays compliant throughout the length of an assignment, so you can rest easy knowing they are always safe and certified.

Drug tests: Healthcare facilities have been increasingly requiring more in-depth drug screen testing. If this sounds like your facility, we recommend making sure the drug screen lab you use can handle these additional requests. If they can’t, it’s a great reason to employ Medical Solutions—our team of experts can handle every step of the hiring process for you, and that includes comprehensive drug tests.

Annual training: Part of making sure your staff remains compliant requires annual training. These training courses cover a variety of topics such as patient safety, infection control, dementia, HIPPA, and OSHA. Once again, if you don’t have the resources to ensure this training regularly happens, Medical Solutions can help!

We’re here to help your contingent staff remain compliant throughout your facility’s entire contract. You can learn more about our Quality Assurance team’s efforts here