The decision to hire a CVO can often be a tricky one. You may already have an entire team dedicated to the credentialing process. What would hiring a CVO mean for them? You might be thinking, “Is it the right thing for us as a department? For us a company?”

Hiring the right CVO can actually be an opportunity both for members of the credentialing team and your business. Understanding what the right CVO can do for your team is an important piece of this puzzle.

Below we discuss the top 5 strategic business reasons plans enlist the help of a CVO and the specifics on what to look for in the right CVO for you and your team.

#1 – Reduce the toll on your employees

Let’s face it. Manual data entry is tedious and the amount of paperwork your credentialing team processes every month not only wears on your team, it also creates overtime. This manual work typically includes:

• Reaching out to each primary source to verify provider information
• Retyping data into your credentialing software or spreadsheet
• Hours sorting through paper files or mining spreadsheets to prep for committee
• Significant time responding to provider status requests from provider relations and management

This manual work often creates the need for regular overtime, both of which correlate with employee burnout and turnover. Turnover adds additional hiring and training costs as well as the opportunity cost of lost productivity due to extended ramp-up time and potential increase in compliance risk.

When evaluating a CVO to reduce the cost to employees, look for a service that reduces manual work:

• Automated primary source verification. Not only does this reduce data entry errors, it speeds up the overall credentialing process
• Built-in reporting tools to make committee prep fast and easy
• Centralized provider profiles that allow key stakeholders access to real-time provider statuses

#2 – Reign in real costs to your bottom line

Overtime, burnout and turnover not only wear on your credentialing team, they add real costs to your bottom line.

To find, hire and train new employees takes time, resources and increases the burden of higher-level team members, who must check the new employee’s work for errors. Simply put, an overburdened, constantly-rotating credentialing team is costly.

Adding headcount to reduce overtime not only increases cost but does not solve the problem of constant manual work that leads to burnout.

Look for a CVO that provides:

• Efficiency for your existing team, freeing up their time to work on more meaningful work than data entry
• Reduced overtime
• Increased data accuracy
• Easily digestible files with clearly presented visual alerts
• Built-in sorting and reporting tools
• Simple implementation and ease-of-use (for quick training)

#3 – Unrestrained credentialing capacity

When you need to expand your network for whatever reason — open enrollment, network adequacy or clearing a backlog — there’s an influx of credentialing work to be done. Is your current team able to handle a deadline-driven influx? With a CVO, your credentialing team will be able to be a successful partner in your organization’s network growth without stress or overtime.

Look for a CVO that provides:

• Speed: Is their average turnaround time faster than yours?
• Increased throughput: How many providers can they credential in one month?
• Built-in reporting tools: Sort providers into categories, allowing for easy committee prep
• Digestible files: Is it easy to understand and sort through the files you receive back?
• Transparency: Are you able to see a provider’s real-time status without asking?

#4 –  Breeze through NCQA audits

An NCQA-certified CVO will do the legwork for meeting NCQA credentialing standards. The NCQA has already reviewed their process, ensuring that it meets their standards. And when it comes time for an audit, it is the CVO’s process that is reviewed. As such, the CVO takes on the bulk of the compliance burden.

Compliance is the original purpose behind the credentialing requirement. Make compliance (and any potential audits) easier by working with a certified CVO.

#5 –  Refocus on mission critical priorities

What makes your organization competitive? What do you do well? Consider outsourcing processes that may be outside of your wheelhouse or that, when outsourced, will help you achieve your strategic goals.

“As a CEO, I never want to hear about credentialing, just like I never want to hear about issues with the Internet or the copy machine. I just want it to work. It’s important to get credentialing done right, but from a strategic perspective, it doesn’t grow the business, so I also don’t want to spend a lot of money on it. I feel great working with andros, because [my team], is happy and satisfied.” —Rick Grindrod, President and CEO of PPHP

It might make sense from a business perspective to outsource your credentialing function if you are looking to achieve any one of these goals:

• Cut credentialing costs
• Save employee time (including overtime)
• Clear a backlog
• Improve your turnaround time
• Increase credentialing throughput
• Stay compliant
• Maintain an adequate network

Working with the right CVO can reduce the stress of credentialing and help your team can work efficiently and effectively. Credentialing is necessary, but the stress of credentialing isn’t.

How does andros compare to your in-house process?

Learn more about how andros automates, simplifies and speeds up the process for your team.>>

Schedule a 15-minute call with us and see how we can get manual work off of your team’s plate or give us a call at (866) 688-8881 weekdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern.