Healthcare laws, statutes, and rules and regulations can be extremely complex, and they can change with some regularity. Within EMS organizations, maintaining compliance is essential to preventing errors, avoiding penalties, and ensuring both employee and patient safety and care.
As an employer, it’s your job to ensure that employees maintain compliance; and this not only requires strict policies and procedures but ongoing compliance training to ensure that employees have the knowledge and resources they need to succeed. Of course, this isn’t always easy to coordinate, what with a large staff, diverse scheduling, and a rotating slate of credentialing renewals to keep track of.
The good news is, there are comprehensive software solutions designed to help you control accreditation, credentials, and compliance of every type. Here’s what you can expect from compliance solutions designed specifically for EMS organizations.
EMS Management
EMS management and compliance needs are wide-ranging, and you need a system that helps you manage everything in one place. The right platform gives you the tools to access essential employee data (on and off site), including everything from uniform size, to staff scheduling, to credentials, to health records (immunizations, drug tests, and more).
You can use it to store and update company policies, protocols, safety data sheets, and other pertinent information, as well as provide access to employees. The right software helps you to communicate with staff and notify them of important messaging. Employees can also use it to communicate operational issues that require attention.
Perhaps most importantly, your EMS management software should provide employees with access to online resources like courses that can be applied to licensing requirements. You can also upload your own training and educational resources for employees to access as needed.
Finally, you need robust tracking and reporting capabilities in order to maintain compliance. Providing the ability to customize reports for audits by different regulatory bodies is ideal. It’s not easy to find EMS management software that meets all your needs, but it does exist, and it can help you to not only manage daily operational needs but also maintain compliance.
EMS Accreditation
Within your organization, you may have a range of employees at different levels of accreditation. They may be comfortable maintaining their current level, or are looking to improve their skillset and gain a higher level of accreditation. As an employer, you not only need to make sure that employees stay on top of renewing their accreditation as required, but it’s wise to encourage improvement by providing the information and resources that help employees reach the next level of accreditation.
With targeted EMS accreditation software, you can easily track and manage employee accreditation requirements, notifying employees when they’re due for renewal, tracking their educational credits, and offering opportunities to take advantage of approved courses to ensure that they have the most up-to-date information needed to provide optimal care and safety to patients.
With a large staff, it can be hard to track and manage accreditation, not to mention employee skillsets and specializations, competencies, activities, performance, and more. However, it’s extremely important that you manage all of these areas to provide exceptional service and ensure regulatory compliance.
Failure to do so can not only harm your employees and your organization, but put patients at risk, which is why it’s so critical to properly track and manage EMS accreditation. The right software solutions will help you track employee accreditation, including obtaining and/or maintaining accreditation with CAMTS, CAAS, and more.
Credential Management
It’s not enough to keep track of which employees have earned which credentials. As a responsible employer, you need to know when those credentials expire and make sure that employees are on track to renew them as required to maintain compliance.
You need to make sure they’re taking needed credits in a timely manner, and verify that the courses will count toward renewal. In truth, the easiest thing would be to provide access to approved courses through your own system so you can track progress, send reminders, and generally make it as easy as possible for employees to do what is necessary to comply with ongoing requirements where credential management is concerned.
The right software solution will help you to monitor licenses and certifications, track credits needed for renewal, and generate alerts to ensure that employees are aware of what they need to do, and when it needs to be done, to maintain credentials and compliance. You can face serious consequences should employees fail to maintain credentials, including fines and difficulties seeking reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid.
In order to protect your company, your employees, and your patients, it’s imperative that you find solutions that not only keep employees on track for maintaining proper credentials, but streamline the process to avoid overtime, and offer opportunities for employees to progress to higher levels of accreditation.
If you have questions about this article or want to see how Ninth Brain can help, email Sales@ninthbrain.com.