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Halt! Who Goes There? Vendormate Checks 30+ Vendor Records Essential to Health Care Security

Atlanta, GA December 18, 2007 – Hospital hallways are hectic places. Medical staff, patients, and visitors bustle about their business not noticing anyone unconnected with their own concerns. But another group is also in the halls. Representatives from pharmaceutical and health care supply companies patrol the corridors, looking for opportunities to tout their products and win new business.

Keeping track of all these vendors coming and going is essential to patient security and cost control. In fact for every vendor company a hospital uses, more than 30 records must be checked or documented for compliance with a variety government regulations and medical guidelines, Vendormate, Inc., the healthcare industry’s leading vendor compliance management provider, announced today.

In the past, vendor representatives had free access to doctors, nurses, technicians, and others to discuss changing patient care and demonstrate their products. Pharmaceutical reps would bring donuts and drug samples to the staff room. Operating room supply representatives would scan hospital schedules for upcoming surgeries that could use their device and offer the doctor a trial, sometimes even coming into the OR to demonstrate its use. Doctors could trial a product and then place an order. But concerns about patient safety and confidentiality as well as rising health care costs from carrying too much inventory have converged to drive hospitals to restrict access to patients, patient data, and staff. In addition, government mandates and regulations related to Medicare/Medicaid cost management and even homeland security have contributed to the myriad of record checks and documentation requirements faced by hospitals and the companies that do business with them.

Andy Monin, Vendormate president and CEO, said, “Hospitals have thousands of vendors. Every company that does business with a hospital in the United States today is touched by regulatory requirements that must be documented. Hospitals are caught in the middle because the burden of proof, or at least verifiable reasonable attempts to comply, is held by the hospital as well as the supplier.”

The wide-ranging requirements include ethics standards, such as Stark Law conflict of interest disclosures and the Deficit Reduction Act which requires documented education of federal and state false claims policies. A vendor’s financial past is cross-checked against Medicare/Medicaid fraud lists. Individuals on the hospital premise need to be screened against US Treasury -- Office of Foreign Assets Control lists to comply with national security regulations. Medical groups, such as the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses, issue immunization and training guidelines for any non-hospital staff in patient care areas.

Making the matter even more difficult for hospitals is that different requirements apply to different constituents of the same vendor. For example, the vendor company itself is scrutinized for the Deficit Reduction Act. The principals of a vendor must be screened against at least 10 government watch lists, even if they never set foot on the hospital grounds. Individual employees of the vendors who come on site are subject to a minimum of logging and identification for The Joint Commission and homeland security. Finally any of these people who have contact with patients or patient records have additional requirements for HIPAA, CDC immunization recommendations, and other guidelines.

Reviewing the records of one typical hospital revealed:

Of 2300 vendor companies serving the hospital:
- 100% have to be identified for Deficit Reduction Act

Each company averages 3 principals. Of the related 6900 principals:
- 100% must document conflicts of interest
- 100% need to be screened against 10 government watch lists

Each company averages 2.3 representatives. Of the 5300 vendor representatives:
- 100% must document conflicts of interest
- 100% need to be screened against 10 government watch lists

And of the unique vendor visitors on site:
- 100% have to be logged and identified for Joint Commission and Homeland Security
- 35% have to be credentialed for HIPAA, CDC, AORN, and ACS guidelines.

“That’s a total of nearly 140,000 different record checks. This is typical of the breadth and depth of the touch of these regulations,” said Mr. Monin. “All these regulations are intended to improve quality in healthcare and security, and any one of these regulations doesn’t seem burdensome, but hospitals are struggling to keep them all straight.” Mr. Monin also noted that hospitals anticipate more requirements are coming.

Hospitals increasingly choose Web-based services to compile required documentation. Three factors are driving hospitals to the Web. First, each area of the hospital historically kept its own records. Medical guidelines, such as training certifications or immunizations, are essential to the patient care areas, while financial reporting is key to materials management or purchasing. Separate record keeping frequently duplicated parts of the information. Second, because hospitals have a different filing system for each regulation, many hospitals have come to fear the work hours required to respond to requests for documentation. Finally, some of the regulations require continually monitoring against watch lists while others are less frequent.

New web-based applications are emerging to centrally collect and organize the entity, individual, and service level data that must be maintained. To make the job easier, Vendormate has integrated the recordkeeping for compliance with the on-site visitor badging. Tying the entity information to the individual information means that hospitals don’t waste resources dealing with a representative from an ineligible enterprise. On the flip side, when a vendor representative comes to a participating hospital, outstanding records or compliance issues are highlighted at the badge kiosk, and hospital personnel can decide whether or not to let the representative continue with the visit.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Mr. Monin. “Vendor management and compliance monitoring will only become more important as health care costs continue to rise.”

About Vendormate, Inc.

Vendormate protects the health of supply chains with a unique vendor credentialing and compliance monitoring solution. Using proprietary software for vendor registration, screening, rating, and cataloging, the program assures compliance with both internal policies and government mandates, including HIPAA and Stark Law. Registered vendors are evaluated against custom criteria and continuously monitored for non-compliance. An integrated badges feature controls facility access. For more information call 1-877-483-6368.