How to get a nursing degree

With nursing home hiring practices coming under closer scrutiny, many facilities are feeling a sense of urgency to implement an employee-screening program. Recent investigations have found employees with criminal records working at several long-term care organizations, and accounts of healthcare workers falsifying their backgrounds or committing fraud on the job persist. Nursing homes need to provide consumers with solid assurances of resident safety and security, and many now must comply with state laws requiring abuse registry or criminal-record checks for certain employees.

Establishing an employee-screening program requires careful attention to selecting appropriate background check components and ensuring legal compliance. The challenge of navigating this unfamiliar territory can be compounded, though, when organizations discover the large number of employee-screening vendors in the marketplace--all of varying sizes, service approaches, levels of quality, and areas of expertise.

To better manage the daunting task of evaluating these vendors, many organizations opt to use a request for proposal (RFP) process. The RFP is an excellent means of setting up a clear comparison among vendors. Even so, an RFP for employee-screening services that fails to raise critical issues and pose appropriate questions will only muddle the evaluation process. Because there are many avenues and complexities to employee screening, it's easy to construct an RFP that yields mountains of vendor-related data, but provides virtually no value in terms of facilitating selection. Here are 10 ways to use the REP process to your best advantage in expediting the selection of an employee-screening service.

1. Don't wait to learn about employee screening from the RFP responses. It's surprisingly common for organizations to distribute an RFP for employee-screening services with little understanding of what they are trying to buy. Organizations need to get smart on employee screening well before writing the RFP. Talk to vendors, not only to familiarize yourself with the employee-screening process, but also to gauge vendors' depth of knowledge and experience, and their willingness to educate you. These preliminary discussions allow you to experience vendors' customer service philosophy and responsiveness firsthand. Keep in mind that you can glean valuable insights about vendors not only from their responses to the RFP, but through their level of participation and interest in the RFP process as a whole.

2. Before you ask about service capabilities, define your program. Although it's important to acquaint yourself with the basic elements of an employee-screening program--i.e., verification of Social Security number, employment, education, credentials, and motor vehicle records, as well as a criminal background check, drug testing, etc.--you can't write effective RFP questions until you determine which elements to include in your program. When mapping out your program, be sure to clearly define the parameters of each check. For instance, if you want to do a criminal background search on all applicants, how far back do you wish to go? Do you want to conduct a county, state, or federal criminal record search, or perhaps a combination? Organizations must also decide how to use screening results in making hiring decisions. What disqualifying criteria do you wish to establish for applicants--a felony conviction? A bankruptcy? A bad reference? Inaccurate professional credentials? Armed with these parameters, consult with vendors to resolve any ambiguities.

3. Know--and communicate--the "ins and outs" of your hiring process. Be sure to include questions in the RFP that help you determine vendors' compatibility with your hiring policies and processes. Ensure, for example, that they can accommodate your hiring volume. If you hire employees at multiple facilities, investigate each vendor's ability to provide customized screening programs for each facility, as well as corporate oversight of the entire program.

Ask RFP questions that thoroughly explore the vendor's ability to integrate its operations with the organization's work flow processes and systems. In addition to investigating vendors' compatibility with your information technology system, identify their ability to accommodate your communications needs--your desired process for requesting and receiving employee-screening information.

4. Give vendors room to elaborate. Construct open-ended RFP questions that give each vendor a chance to explain what makes its organization and services unique. A broader question, such as, "What is your approach to customer service?" will yield a much more valuable response than a pointed yes-or-no inquiry, such as, "Will we have a dedicated customer service representative?"

5. Look closely at performance guarantees. The employee-screening process is a logistical one--information is collected from multiple sources and communicated back to you. Include questions in your RFP that allow vendors to demonstrate the tools and resources at their disposal to manage these logistics. Vendors who guarantee turnaround time may simply be telling you what you want to hear, rather than educating you as to the true workings of the process. For instance, the availability of information sources cannot always be controlled. Consider, hypothetically, that a vendor guarantees performing an education credential verification within 72 hours, even though schools are closed for spring break.

6. To get good pricing data, be specific about the services you need. To gather pricing information that will allow you to make a true, "apples to apples" comparison of pricing among vendors, be as specific as possible about the products and services you are looking for. For a criminal search, specify what type, such as a county criminal search covering a 7-year history in all counties of residence. For a reference check, specify how many, such as three references per applicant, and state the types of questions you wish the references to be asked. For an education verification, specify what you want confirmed, such as highest degree received or attempted, graduation date, major and minor areas of study, etc. Spelling out these exact parameters should also help you flag submitted pricing that appears "too good to be true."

7. Do your own background investigation-ask for vendor references. Your RFP should contain a request for vendors to provide multiple customer references. Ask for specific contact information for each customer name provided. You may gather more insightful information by requesting a full client list and choosing reference contacts from that.

8. Narrow the field to make the process more manageable. If you are selecting an employee-screening vendor from a large field of possibilities, you can make the RFP process more manageable by making an initial cut prior to distributing the RFP. A good way to do this is by sending a brief request for information (RFI) questionnaire to all of your prospects. Use the RFI to prequalify vendors, screening them for key strengths that match your program needs or weaknesses that might frustrate your efforts. Key strengths to look for in long-term care might include a healthcare-oriented customer base, healthcare industry expertise, industry-related technologic capabilities, as well as relevant quality controls, training, customer service, pricing, location, or size considerations.

9. Once the RFP has been distributed, set aside time for vendor questions before the final RFP response is due. The better that vendors can clarify for themselves the services you are looking for, the better they can tailor their RFP responses to your needs. As part of your RFP instructions, consider establishing a formal question-and-answer period for vendors. This could be conducted over a general time frame during which you will answer questions submitted to you by fax or e-mail, through a conference call, or during an on-site meeting to address vendors collectively.

10. When evaluating responses, read between the lines. An RFP is the vendor's opportunity to demonstrate its attention to detail and understanding of your employee-screening needs. Be sure to take note of the thoroughness and care taken by vendors in answering your questions. If a vendor doesn't make the effort to shine in the RFP, this might not bode well for the level of service you ultimately will receive.

Stefan Keller is president of Certiphi Screening, a provider of employee-screening services, including background checks and drug screening, exclusively to the healthcare industry. For further information, phone (888) 260-1370. ext. 2003, or visit www.certiphi.com. To comment on this article, please send e-mail to keller05O3-nursinghomesmagazine.com.