Healthcare is a fast-moving industry that requires employers to take special considerations.
The healthcare industry in India is set to reach $372 Billion by 2022. This rise of almost three folds is mostly driven by rising incomes, greater health awareness, lifestyle, and increasing access to insurance. With it, the requirement of healthcare professionals will increase dramatically.
There is a shortage of all possible medical professional requirements. India requires 2.07 Million more doctors by 2030 to reach a modest doctor to population ratio of 1:1000. And at a rate of 30,000 medical graduates a year, the requirement is falling way short.
Importance of healthcare background checks
The shortage is evident in the requirement of nurses and dentists as well and will rise in the future. The severe shortage in supply versus the demand consequently opens up avenues for forgery, fake degrees, and falsified experience showcased to obtain medical jobs.
Considering that the cost to get a fake degree in India is as low as 50,000 rupees, the temptation to forge a degree to become a doctor is an all-time high.
And, with the shortage of professionals, the possibility of hospitals missing out on verifying the credentials of key employees is far greater. Thousands of such professionals currently exist in the system and are unearthed regularly, some even having conducted thousands of surgeries with fake degree certificates.
Healthcare background checks are tailored to the healthcare industry and vary in complexity based on the position a company is hiring for. For example, a physician will require a much more comprehensive check than a nurse, or medical assistant.
The demand for healthcare fraud detection
Any industry which grows at a rapid scale requires adequate checks to keep things clean. The healthcare industry worldwide is going through such a change and requires ample amounts of fraud detection and checks poured into the system.
Significant players like Wipro, HCL, IBM, Optum, SAS, etc., are pouring in resources to help the cause of fraud detection on a large scale. Insurance, hospitals, doctors, nurses, diagnostics, pharmacies, drug testing, drug standardization, clinical trials, drug invention, the list of avenues for malpractice is enormous in this industry.
There is a lot that could go wrong in any of these areas — ultimately hurting people in the process. It happens all the time. Some different organizations and bodies help maintain a level of quality in the regions that help a bigger population. But on a granular scale, the industry lacks authenticity and is subject to frequent malpractice.
Call for verified professionals in healthcare
Professionals are people who build a reputation. These reputations are built on credentials, their successes, the experience they have, etc. These credentials could be checked and verified accurately to understand the professional’s past before employing.
The responsibility of hiring authentic and verified professionals is of paramount importance to any organization in healthcare.
A primary background verification could help understand the educational qualification, the experience worthiness, the success claim measures, which could validate any claims by a potential candidate. Any dependency on the credential could indicate forgery or falsification — something which could prevent a long haul of mistreated patients and the ultimate devaluation of the organization.
John Nosta, a digital health philosopher, puts it diligently, “We’re seeing an interesting convergence of technology, medicine, social issues, and human progress.”
SpringVerify has been elemental in validating candidate profiles for some of the most prestigious organizations through background checks. We highly recommend and promote such a procedure for all the organization heads we meet. Almost pushy at times, all because we have seen the benefits reaped by some of our clients.
FAQs
A thorough drug screening as part of background checks identifies candidates who may be unsafe working around patients while under the influence and are more likely to abuse access to prescription medication.
Thorough healthcare background checks can be a time-consuming and tedious process. It is beneficial to hire a background service provider to simplify the process and often provide a more thorough analysis of a candidate.
Here is a list of the most important healthcare background checks:
– Identity verification check
– Criminal record check
– Sex offender check
– Drug screening
– Professional license verification
– Education verification
– Employment verification
– Reference checks
Doing background verification yourself is complicated and time-consuming. Try our employee background verification platform, Springverify – where employee verifications happen seamlessly and with minimal effort required from both the company.
Article was updated on May 24 2021
