Today, 30-50 percent of all hospital data breaches are attributed to business associates and vendors.
Hospitals and healthcare systems rely on hundreds of vendors every day to provide reliable services. These services can range from hospitality, transportation, security, IT, transcription, linen, laundry, patient, medical, clinical, and waste removal, to name a few. The reliance on outsourcing various business operations to business associates, vendors, contractors and suppliers is big business. However, in a highly regulated market such as healthcare, there can be big risk too. That’s why regularly vendor management through monitoring and analyzing vendor performance at various stages of the supply chain should not be left to chance.
Hospitals can be fined up to $11,000 USD for each claim filed with an excluded or sanctioned vendor—and it’s the hospitals’ responsibility to always know the vendor status and position across multiple exclusion and sanction lists. Depending on the level of breach, hospital personnel can also be liable – facing both fines and jail time. When breaches involve excluded or sanctioned vendors, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) can revoke the hospital’s right to bill for services rendered. Not to be overlooked, conducting business with third-party vendors is a series issue that can pose a real threat.
It’s the hospitals or healthcare systems’ responsibility to ensure all vendors remain in good standing and that those with signed business associate agreements meet the eligibility requirements.
Does your organization have visibility into the standing of all your third-party relationships?
Does your organization have a policy and procedure in place for real-time vendor, contractor and supplier management?
How do you manage reputational risk?
What is your organizations’ risk tolerance?
LIMITLESS offers a fully managed solution to ensure you are “paying for what you are receiving”. Ensuring contract terms are met as well as compliance standards. Tracking any potential risks, optimizing your billing and managing all contract and agreements in one central software solution.
Outsourcing vendor management to a third party will also help standardize processes; and consistency helps enable the transparency essential to effective governance. This helps to alleviate flawed data, and costly mistakes.
Our software will not only house every contract, service agreement, warranty or renewal agreement, but we also manage negotiations for better rates and terms saving your business from unnecessary fees and costs while maintaining quality standards. If you have questions regarding how to manage vendor contracts/agreements or would like more information regarding our fully managed vendor management solution contact LIMITLESS at (866) 504-4050.