The NCQA (National Committee for Quality Assurance) has a published timeline for HEDIS (Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set) benchmarks. February 15th 2015 marks the goal to begin the actual work of Chart Abstraction and then Over-Reading, although some Managed Care Organizations are already ahead of schedule, while others may still be a little behind. For CareNational, as one of the nation’s top HEDIS staffing agencies, that means the bulk of the hiring and staffing of HEDIS workers has been completed. It has been a flurry of activity here, and the excitement is palpable as we tap into our robust network of healthcare professionals and scour the country side for every experienced HEDIS nurse and coder. But it has also been an enormous success for us and our client organizations, as we are on track to provide more than 100 HEDIS professionals to health plans and related production vendors.
Some of the common feedback we receive from our clients, particularly from hiring managers in roles like the Director of Quality Improvement & HEDIS Operations, is about the quality and caliber of the candidates we present. As this series of blogs demonstrates, we take the time to understand what HEDIS means for the health plan, and the skills and experiences needed for a successful Abstractor or Overreader. Our clients tell us that some of their other staffing vendors seem to almost be guessing wildly at what would be a good match, based on the candidates they send over. Sometimes they only continue to use these big-box vendors because they provide broad-spectrum staffing support. They are contracted to simultaneously search for nursing staff, AND clerical staff, AND custodial staff, AND security staff, etc (and those are just the orders they are working on for your company…). This may be convenient in some ways, but it does beg the question: How specialized is your staffing vendor?
Last year CareNational published a white paper entitled “Five Reasons Why Your HR Department’s Recruiting Vendor May be Hindering Your Recruiting Goals.” Below we expand on the first item addressed, “The recruiting firm does not really Specialize in what you do.” Download the full white paper to read more about these 5 common pitfalls.
We sometimes hear horror stories from our clients about other recruiting firms who don’t really know what a Chart Abstractor does or even what Quality Improvement is. They often just use these as keywords in searches through online resume databases and then present to a health plan client a provider office manager who said she supported HEDIS measures by accurately charting patients, or who assisted abstractors by pulling requested charts. Unfortunately this is too often the results produced by big-box staffing vendors. On the other hand, when a health plan partners with CareNational for a HEDIS Overreading RN, they can be assured that we are going to not only send them a Registered Nurse with a solid acute care clinical nursing foundation. We will make certain they have done abstraction for 3-5 years, was in an Over-reader role last HEDIS season, and had an IRR (inter-rater reliability) accuracy rating of 90% or better.
We consider it imperative for hiring managers to carefully evaluate the recruiting firm with whom they are considering contracting. To that end, we have created a downloadable checklist for HR leaders and hiring managers to utilize when selecting a HEDIS staffing vendor. Find out if they are truly specialized in the niche they claim, or do the attempt to be all things for all industries? Have they served similar industries or types of organizations for related critical vacancies? Often this is as simple as visiting the career listings on their website and seeing what percentage are in line with your needs.
CareNational is TRULY SPECIALIZED in managed care nurses and related healthcare professionals in our niche. The map above speaks for itself on the volume of HEDIS opportunities we staff for, and how successful we have been in 2015. Also consider a visit to our careers page at careers-carenational.com for a browse through our current opportunities. You can see for yourself how our opportunities, while obviously broader than strictly HEDIS, are all 100% within our niche of medical management/healthcare services. We hope that the checklist available below will be useful this fall when you consider what staffing vendor to partner with for the 2016 HEDIS hiring season.