Hiring medical assistants: legal and regulatory considerations
Even though the scope of practice of medical assistants varies from state to state, the primary duties of a medical assistant revolve around clinical tasks and administrative duties. Due to the complex nature of the medical assistant job, which demands both technical expertise and non-technical skills, there is a substantial gap in meeting the existing staff demands. As facilities strive to find and hire medical assistants, little attention might be put to compliance verification and credentialing, which can lead to regulatory issues in the long run.
To avoid these regulatory risks, facilities must devise a well-structured approach for interviewing and onboarding candidates by adhering to the legal and regulatory considerations detailed by the state where their facility is located. This blog delves into the various legal and regulatory issues that may arise from medical assistant hiring and how they can be solved efficiently.
Why proper credentialing is essential to hire medical assistants?
In a field as critical as the healthcare sector, credentialing and compliance checks are important factors in medical assistant hiring as failing to adhere to the federal or state regulatory norms can lead to serious legal concerns. Credentialing encompasses all the background verification and credential checks of the potential candidate to see that the candidate’s qualifications, skillsets, experience, and traits are fit to work as a medical assistant in a healthcare setting. This ensures minimal occurrence of errors by professionals, leading to optimal patient care. When hiring medical assistants, background verification also helps identify any pending criminal or drug abuse records, which can put the patient’s safety at risk.
Compliance checks constitute detailed verification and checks done to ensure that the candidate fulfills all the regulatory guidelines implemented by the state to work as a medical assistant at your facility. The state monitors these regulatory guidelines, and failure to adhere to these can lead to serious legal complications and reputational damage to your facility. Some states require medical assistants to pass a licensure examination, which might include questions to check the candidate’s safety standards and legal understanding. These licenses are subject to renewal at regular intervals to ensure that the medical assistants practicing in the state are updated on the latest medical trends and guidelines. For most states, continuing education is the mandate for license renewal.
All these hiring process compliance checks and credentialing need to be strictly followed by the facilities as well as medical assistants to navigate any future legal complications. Moreover, credentialing ensures that patients get proper treatment from skilled professionals, adhering to safety standards with minimal errors. By ensuring proper credentialing, healthcare facilities can maintain high care standards and improve operational efficiency by uplifting their professional reputation.
What are the key legal and regulatory considerations in hiring medical assistants?
The compliance verification and credentialing behind the onboarding process are burdensome and require the utmost care. When you hire medical assistants, keep note of regulatory issues that may arise and strategies to mitigate them effectively.
- Certification and educational qualification requirements: The medical assistants must complete a post-secondary program or on-the-job training from an accredited institution to practice in healthcare settings. Some states require them to be certified or licensed to practice in the state as medical assistants. Hence, it is essential to understand the state-specific requirements and general educational qualifications necessary to become a certified medical assistant.
- License requirements: When a license is mandated in your state, it requires frequent renewal by completing continuing education requirements. Always check with your state licensing agency to understand the criteria, timeline, and policies regarding the medical assistant license and its renewal. Also, verify that the medical assistant’s license was recently renewed.
- Credentialing and background checks: A thorough background check is essential to ensure the candidate has no pending criminal or drug usage records. You can ask the candidate for a reference letter from previous employers to validate the medical assistant credentialing process further. Also, it is essential to verify the authenticity of every certification produced by the candidate.
- Adherence to employment laws: There are various employee welfare acts governing aspects such as fair labor pay, diversity and equity policies, wages, and overtime allowances to protect the workplace safety and employee wellness of medical professionals. Also, be aware of the “ban the box” policy in your state, if any, which states that you cannot ask for criminal history in the job application, and this needs to be checked later on after the interview process to ensure that even candidates who had prior criminal background have a fair opportunity for the job. Thus, understanding and comprehending these guidelines while crafting job descriptions is essential to hire medical assistants.
- Employment contract and policies: While recruiting medical assistants, frame proper employment contracts and policies that define the terms of the contract, including duties, compensation, benefits, and termination policies. You can relieve these contractual documentation tasks when you hire medical assistants from experienced medical assistant staffing agencies, who act as the employer of record (EOR) and take care of all the staffing formalities, including payrolling.
Orientation and safety standard training: Even if the medical assistants are experienced enough to work in healthcare settings, design medical assistant training programs and provide them a proper orientation on the safety standards and other ethical guidelines to work in your facility to mitigate any such risks. Training medical assistants to work in the specific setting of your facility can be an added advantage in the long run.
Essential background checks to hire Medical Assistants
When you hire medical assistants, it is essential to balance security and fairness. Safeguarding a compliant environment while laying down equitable policies for the staff is crucial. Here are some background check best practices to balance security and fairness while hiring medical assistants.
- Provide a detailed explanation of the job description of a medical assistant in your facility at the time of the interview.
- Give a clear picture of the interview procedure, credentialing, and compliance requirements to the candidate.
- Get written consent from the potential candidate before you initialize the background check and credentialing process.
- Ask the candidate for references from previous employers to facilitate medical assistant credentialing.
- Have a standardized process of background verification that ensures that all the candidates who applied for the same position undergo the same process.
- Provide the findings of your background verification and give a chance for the candidate to explain any inaccuracy in the findings that caused disqualifying them.
- Have thorough documentation of the credentialing process to support fairness and defend against any potential legal claims.
- Secure the candidate data collected confidentially and limit access to the background check documents to authorized personnel only.
Creating an effective Medical Assistant onboarding program
To create an effective medical assistant onboarding program, facilities have to prepare well in advance to curate a structured onboarding and orientation process. A proper orientation needs to be provided to the onboarded candidates on their technical duties, facility values, administrative tasks, safety standards, and patient handling to mitigate all potential risks. During the initial days of employment, the newly hired medical assistants can be assigned to work with other experienced professionals who can mentor the newly recruited medical assistants. A good practice would be to monitor the performance of the onboarded medical assistants at regular intervals and provide them with feedback for improvement. With these strategies, facilities can curate an effective medical assistant onboarding program that provides a seamless experience.
Hire medical assistants: ensure 100% compliance via MedSquirrels staffing platform
Legal and regulatory issues are crucial in healthcare staffing as the field demands adequately trained and fit staff to care for the patients. Thus, it is vital to ensure that patient safety is a primary concern when hiring medical assistants while also ensuring a safe working environment for them. Effectively streamlining all the fluctuating regulatory guidelines and ensuring proper documentation while hiring a resource can be challenging as this process demands both money and effort from the administrative team. The best way to hire medical assistants would be to get help from a medical assistant staffing solutions provider like MedSquirrels, which can navigate through all your facility’s staffing demands by ensuring 100% proper credentialing and accurate compliance checks.
MedSquirrels is a well-reputed and experienced medical staffing solutions platform leveraging technology to ensure all the processes associated with staff onboarding, credentialing, compliance checks, etc, are accurately done and managed hassle-free. MedSquirrels also has an experienced team of recruiters to cross-check and validate each stage of the medical assistant hiring process, relieving you of potential compliance risks in the future. MedSquirrels’ EOR functionality is one of the most sought-after features based on a flat license fee model to eliminate the huge markup fee that facilities have to pay to middlemen. To know more about how MedSquirrels’ staffing platform can help you hire medical assistants, book a demo today.
