As important as criminal background checks are in hiring the right personnel for your organization, they can actually do more harm than good if you don’t perform them properly. Here are some employee screening “do’s and don’ts” to keep in mind.

Do Conduct a National Criminal Database Search

While screening for local convictions will always be extremely important, keep in mind that people do move around from state to state, possibly leaving previous criminal offenses in their wake. For this reason it usually makes good sense to cast your data collection net much wider by making use of a national criminal database. While these databases aren’t always perfectly comprehensive or up to date, you can learn a great deal in a relatively short period of time by running a national criminal background check.

Don’t Profile by Asking About Arrests

Did you know that asking about a candidate’s previous arrests could leave you open to accusations of profiling? The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission warns that arrests cannot be used as a fair bar to employment because of the disparate effect it would have on certain population groups. Instead, ask about prior convictions and pleas of no contest.

Do Give Proper Notice

“Stealth screening” could land your company in hot water. According to The Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have to make it clear that the job candidate will be subject to a criminal background check, and the candidate has to agree in writing before you can proceed. But your responsibility doesn’t end there. If the results of the background check cause you to pass on that candidate, you’re required to explain the reasons, make the report available to the candidate, and provide the contact information of the screening service.

Don’t Leave the Employee Screening Process Up to Interpretation

Establishing a clearly defined and articulated employee screening process is a must for applying fair and consistent hiring standards. Go into detail regarding what kinds of data your HR staff should collect, when it should be gathered, and what means should be used to collect it. Make this documentation required reading for all personnel involved in employee hiring, and have them sign off on revised versions as needed.

Employee screening can be a legal and logistical minefield, so here’s one more “do” — do leave it to an experienced provider of such services. These experts’ tools and advice can help ensure that you select your future workers as fairly and intelligently as possible.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Forty-one of fifty states and the District of Columbia require a criminal background search on home health agency employees. The number is expected to grow by at least four more states soon. These healthcare background checks are typical of the kind run by all health care providers from hospitals to private practices. In most cases, an applicant’s fingerprints are scanned through a state database and a national database and county criminal search is also performed. Hiring excluded persons is prohibited when a provider accepts Medicare or Medicaid.

Patient and Employee Safety

One reason that background checks for all healthcare employees is popular, is the responsibility employers have in making sure that patients and employees are in a safe environment. Criminals, especially violent ones, can, in a single incident, bring so much bad publicity to a facility or practice that it takes years to recover.

Hiring Excluded Persons

When providers accept Medicare or Medicaid, the need for a more extensive background check for all employees is not a luxury but is an absolute necessity. On October 24th, 2014, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) reached a settlement in the amount of $357,341.96 with Daybreak Venture LLC. Daybreak is the general partner of 74 skilled nursing and long-term care centers scattered all over Texas. According to HHS, seven Daybreak owned facilities hired employees who are excluded from employment with federal health programs or providers who accept Medicare and/or Medicaid. Billing for services provided by these people and subsequently discovered by the OIG has severe penalties.

How Severe are the Penalties when Hiring Excluded Persons?

First, 100 percent of the money collected for services provided by excluded personnel are refunded to the Federal Government.

Then there are the civil money penalties (CMP) as well. Employers who hired an excluded person and then billed for any services, that they provided to any federal health program for services, is subject to a fine of $10,000 per occurrence. So, a physician or hospital who hires a Physicians Assistant who is an excluded person can be fined $10,000 for each and every charge made for work done by that person. CMP fines add up quickly and can easily surpass the amount of the restitution. According to a Special Bulletin published by the OIG, the effect of an exclusion is to

“…preclude employment of an excluded individual in any capacity by a health care provider that receives reimbursement, indirectly or directly, from any Federal health care program.”

Incidentally, the OIG suggests in the same bulletin that rechecks be done periodically for all staff.

Protect Yourself and Your Company

Using an experienced employment screening service can help with the tedious tasks of checking databases for normal criminal activities and for individuals who may not have been convicted of a crime, but are on the OIG List of Excluded Persons. Quality employment screening services have access to databases that are not on a normal business’s radar.

Disclaimer Statement: All information presented is for information purposes only and is not intended to provide professional or legal advice regarding actions to take in any situation.

Sources: www.burr.com

Most business owners have struggled to achieve success. They work hard and expect to hire employees who will also work hard and contribute to the growth of the business. Although the majority of job applicants are also honest and hard-working, there are some dishonest applicants. There are a few who are willing to lie, cheat and steal if they think it will help them get the job they want.

Business News Daily reports on a survey of 23 retail companies which own 18,900 stores across the country. Annual sales equal approximately $596 billion. Between 2011 and 2012, those stores lost more than $50 million in merchandise and 70,095 employees were arrested. The survey found that new hires, or those who have not been working very long for the company, are the most likely employees to steal.

Human resource professionals have offered a few tips for identifying dishonest applicants prior to offering them a job.

1. Watch the applicant’s body language: Interviewers should pay close attention to the applicant’s body language during the interview. Does the applicant make eye contact or constantly look away? Does the applicant appear overly nervous and avoid using hand gestures? Although taken in isolation, these actions may not have significance. When coupled with other indicators of dishonesty, they take on greater significance.
2. Have others in the company also interview the applicant: Dishonest applicants often have trouble keeping their story straight. If several people individually interview the applicant, but ask the same questions, inconsistencies in the answers may be identified.
3. Check references and do a thorough background check: Honest people find it surprising to discover how many people lie on their resumes about their academic credentials. Recently, a basketball coach who had been hired by the University of Florida for a five-year, $5 million contract discovered he was out of a job when the University discovered that, contrary to what he had reported on his resume, he had never actually graduated from the University of Kentucky. In order to avoid hiring dishonest applicants, employers are urged to use a professional employment screening company to do a comprehensive background check of all applicants, including checking academic credentials, calling references and conducting a credit and a criminal background check.
4. Ask applicants to show, not tell: If applicants claim to have special skills, employers should ask applicants to show the employer what they actually can do. If they cannot perform, the employer discovers not only that they do not have the requisite skill, but that they are dishonest by claiming they could do something they cannot do.

Thanks in large part to advancements in digitization and Web technologies, employers now have access to more information about their employees than at any previous period in our country’s history. Since the mid-1990’s, employers have experienced increasing access to employee healthcare data. But, this proliferation of information at HR pros fingertips, introduces new challenges for organizations.

Over the last 18 years, four developments occurred that transformed employer access to employee healthcare records. Those four developments were — the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996, the enforcement of its Privacy Rule in 2003, the revisions made to HIPAA in 2009’s Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, and the gradual adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems by healthcare providers.

Yet while access to individuals’ health data increased, the U.S. Congress did invoke regulations for how this information should be managed and safeguarded.

HIPAA’s Privacy Rule created protections for “all ‘individually identifiable health information’ held or transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate, in any form or media, whether electronic, paper, or oral.” It defined this as protected health information (PHI). HIPAA’s Privacy Rule, as well as its Administrative Simplification provisions, enacted guidelines that both “covered entities” and their “business associates” must follow when collecting, using and disclosing an individual’s PHI, regardless of its format.

HIPAA’s Administrative Simplification standards classify health plans, healthcare clearinghouses and healthcare providers as “covered entities.” Hence, its regulations apply to any individuals or organizations that fall under the definition of a “covered entity.”

Furthermore the HITECH Act, which amended HIPAA by expanding its reach, extended HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Provisions over “covered entities” and their “business associates.” HIPAA’s Privacy Rule defines a “business associate” as “a person or organization, other than a member of a covered entity’s workforce, that performs certain functions or activities on behalf of, or provides certain services to, a covered entity that involve the use or disclosure of individually identifiable health information. Business associate functions or activities on behalf of a covered entity include claims processing, data analysis, utilization review, and billing.”

Under the expanded regulations of HIPAA, made possible through some of the HITECH Act’s key provisions, “covered entities” and their “business associates” are confined to collecting, sharing and using only certain types of PHI.

You might ask yourself, where does this leave an employer who cannot be classified as either a “covered entity” or “business associate”?

Although most employers do not fall under the category of being a “covered entity”, in most cases they are still impacted by HIPAA’s regulations around how “covered entities” should be handling PHI. For instance, HIPAA’s Privacy Rule does not directly regulate these employers in their role as plan sponsors. But, the company group health plans that these employers sponsor do fall under HIPAA’s definition of a “covered entity.” Thus, HIPAA does regulate the group health plans that are sponsored by these employers. HIPAA defines health plans as “an individual or group plan that provides, or pays the cost of, medical care.”

As a consequence, the majority of employers who provide health care benefits are affected by HIPAA’s Privacy Rule to varying degrees.

And other areas of HIPAA, like its Security Rule, which focuses exclusively on PHI that is stored or transmitted electronically, also regulates certain types of employers. It applies to employers who sponsor self-insured group health, dental and/or vision plans with 50 or more participants, or that are administered by a third party. In addition, the Security Rule applies to healthcare reimbursement flexible spending accounts and employee assistance programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) defines the Security Rule’s primary objective as being to “protect individuals’ electronic personal health information that is created, received, used, or maintained by a covered entity.”

Given HIPAA’s wide-reaching influence, most employers need to be doing more to make sure that their HR workforce is knowledgeable about HIPAA regulations. With the exception of cases involving “covered entities”, or “business associates” working in healthcare, most employers do not provide adequate amounts of HIPAA training to their HR employees. Employers need to invest in resources and comprehensive training that will enable their HR staff to properly identify, handle and protect PHI.

The HHS published data in 2010 that showed a glaring need exists for employers to provide this type of training to their HR staff. The HHS’s Annual Report to Congress on Breaches of Unsecured Protected Health Information revealed the most common causes of large breaches in 2010. The report provided the following data on general causes of breaches of unsecured PHI during that year:

• Theft was the most common reported cause of large breaches.
• Among the 207 breaches that affected 500 or more individuals, 99 incidents involved theft of paper records or electronic media, together affecting approximately 2,979,121 individuals.
• Loss of electronic media or paper records affected approximately 1,156,847 individuals.
• Unauthorized access to, or uses or disclosures of, PHI affected approximately 1,006,393 individuals.
• Human or technological errors, or other failures to take adequate care of PHI, affected approximately 78,663 individuals.
• Improper disposal of paper affected approximately 70,279 individuals.

Aside from offering HIPAA training to their HR teams, organizations also need to establish clear policies that detail the responsibilities and processes for reporting a potential PHI breach. Their policies should also summarize how, if necessary, corrective action will be taken by the presiding powers. Plus, every policy needs to define the different levels of a PHI breach, and the corresponding corrective action that needs to be taken at each level.

In addition, every HR pro should become familiar with HIPAA’s provisions for working with “business associates.” It is incumbent upon HR managers to make sure that their staff understand what is required of them, and any “business associates” that they are working with, when analyzing, processing and disposing PHI.

Likewise, HR departments that choose to partner with a background screening company, who can be defined under HIPAA as a “business associate”, should be especially selective. It is critical to choose a background screening company that is well-versed on the HIPAA regulations that they need to abide by in their role as a “business associate.”

Rapid advancements in technology, along with two decades of game-changing legislation, have significantly altered employers’ access to, and responsibilities around, employee health information. Every employer needs to understand what is required of them. Moreover, they need to make sure that their HR teams are equipped with the right knowledge and tools to handle this information in the correct fashion.

Forbes recently published a post by Dan Schawbel in which he predicted many changes are expected to occur within the workplace over the next few years. Jobs are becoming more and more competitive, and employers are finding creative ways of “filtering” candidates. On the other hand, baby boomers are retiring and many people are electing to work from home which will leave some recruiters “scrambling” for workers.

Workplace trends and major changes in the workplace

• Working remotely from home is increasing: A recent Gallup Study conducted between the years of 2010 and 2012 on The State of The American Workplace, indicated that more people are now being allowed by their employers to work remotely from home. According to the study, those who do so are actually more productive and engaged.
• Freelancing is becoming the norm: Approximately 17 million people work at home on a freelance basis and have no employer. Schawbel predicts that in six years, there will be more freelancers than employees. Employers enjoy hiring freelancers because they pay for the work but do not have to provide benefits, like vacation time or health care.
• Baby Boomers are retiring: Those born between 1946 and 1964, commonly referred to as Baby Boomers, either have retired or will soon be retiring creating a gap in qualified and experienced workers. HR personnel are having trouble filling the vacancies and dealing with the impact of the loss of these workers. These workplace trends may also cause some problems with the depletion of retirement funds in some companies.
• Baby Boomers are not retiring: On the other hand, many Baby Boomers put off retiring, which creates different types of hiring decision problems for HR managers. As workers age, they may require more health care which may have an impact on the health care benefits. It also delays hiring decisions for new employees to fill the positions.
• Employers are changing the way they “filter” applicants: In addition to conducting comprehensive background checks for job applicants, 94 percent of HR recruiters report they use social media to recruit candidates for employment. Some will require applicants to take a test on critical thinking skills.
• Employers are increasing the hire of part-time workers: At least 17 percent of all employers report they are veering toward hiring more part-time workers. One of the main reasons is that they do not want to pay health-care benefits as required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The workplace trends of working remotely and freelancing will continue into the foreseeable future as companies want to cut costs and increase their bottom line. The trend of Baby Boomers continuing to work and the ACA will have major impacts on the job market over the next ten years. These workplace trends will delay hiring decisions resulting in a decline in new job creation.