People who work in healthcare know that they will often be put into sensitive situations. The patients they work with – as well as patients’ families – are often distracted, scared and vulnerable. It’s the responsibility of the medical facility to ensure patients’ safety in this vulnerable state by properly screening health care employees.
It is difficult to tell at first glance which applicants for a given job are safe and trustworthy and which are not. No matter how good a feeling you might get from an applicant, healthcare professional screening is an important element making sure you can trust your employees with your patients and your reputation.
What Healthcare Professional Screening Involves
Screening healthcare employees involves using a third party background check company to:
- Make sure the applicant’s resume matches actual work history.
- Determine whether an applicant has ever committed a violent crime.
- Ensure that the applicant has never been convicted of abuse.
- Eliminate anyone who has a history of theft.
While healthcare professional screening is just one component of a thorough hiring process, it can go a long way toward preventing costly mishaps.
How Screening Healthcare Employees Protects Against Liability
Even one instance of negligence on an employer’s part can lead to expensive litigation, as well as incalculable damage to a healthcare provider or facility’s all-important reputation. For that reason, it’s important to know as much as possible about your employees – especially since many healthcare positions are unsupervised. Patients need to know before they choose from whom to receive their healthcare that they will be treated well, treated ethically and that the people around them are trustworthy individuals.
Fortunately, carefully screening healthcare employees not only helps prevent mishaps that can lead to lawsuits, but it can also reduce the provider’s liability in the event that a problem does occur. Healthcare professional screening is just one way of covering your bases in today’s litigious society.