Vendor credentialing ignores the real risk to hospital worker and patient safety
Editor’s note: The following piece was written by Bruce Stanley, a supply chain and contracting operations consultant, and an adjunct professor at Endicott College’s MBA program, teaching global supply chain, contracting and healthcare informatics and regulations. He served as senior director, contracting operations, for Becton Dickinson. He is a former chairman of the AdvaMed working group focused on vendor access-credentialing, and has collaborated with MassMedic and AdvaMed on legislative initiatives related to this topic. In 2011, he co-founded The Stanley East Consulting Group, in Ipswich, Mass., a global consulting practice specializing in supply chain, contracting, order fulfillment and project management for small and medium-sized companies, startups, and companies in transition or divestiture.
The last few months have become deadly in highly regarded U.S. hospitals. In March, a Wisconsin man was charged in the fatal stabbing of his estranged wife while both visited a patient in a suburban Chicago hospital. Two months earlier, in January, a world-famous surgeon was gunned down at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston by the son of a former patient. That same month, a nurse was shot in a Los Angeles hospital. Last November, a shooting and death occurred at Highland Park (Ill.) Hospital. In an unsettling instance, a teenager dressed as a doctor walked the halls of a West Palm Beach, Fla., hospital a month before being stopped.
Most patients, families and clinicians don’t want the refuge of patient recovery to become a fortress. However, these incidents and others like them raise concerns as to how hospitals focus on visitor access and patient management at the front door of their facilities.
Over the last five years, our industry has been somewhat misguided and misdirected by its forceful implementation of sales rep credentialing. Such efforts have had no clear connection to either patient or facility safety, nor are they clinically relevant. Healthcare worker safety never appeared to be on the minds of those who brought us vendor credentialing. Instead, the purpose seems to have been to micromanage and control sales reps.
I am not suggesting that credentialing of sales reps be discontinued. However, I believe that the time has come for the focus to be redirected on those who pose the greatest risk and harm – unchecked visitors.
To gain access, sales reps have endured miles of reporting and endless requirements, with increased expense of time and money. But if, instead of controlling reps, hospitals collaborated with them, reps could help keep hospitals safe. They could act as another set of eyes and ears, and be supportive of the security required to maintain safety in hospitals and clinics. Beginning with the New York City mantra “See something, say something,” they can become critical partners in hospital safety.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if we have heard the end of these types of healthcare facility tragedies. Healthcare leaders need to include its credentialing partners and constituencies in establishing stronger protocols and support mechanisms to establish safety at the front door – in the right area, with the right tools, for the right reasons.
We have security technology in shopping malls, airports, and almost everywhere. Now is the time to utilize our great resources to protect patients, healthcare workers and visitors of good will alike.