An interview with Bryan Barajas of PreCheck.

1. What is the background of PreCheck? How would you describe your mission?

PreCheck began as an investigations firm in 1983, but we began focusing on addressing the healthcare industry’s needs for background screening in 1993. That means we have over 20 years of exclusively working with healthcare organizations to implement and improve their background screening programs. Our CEO Glenn Woolsey saw healthcare’s need for better employment screening in the early 90’s, and PreCheck has evolved to meet that critical need.

Last year, we revised PreCheck’s mission statement to better reflect what we aim to accomplish today: “Connecting people with information to advance the quality of healthcare.” We are truly a partner and see ourselves as an extension of a hospital or care organization’s HR team, providing them with quality background screening that will enable them to make better hiring decisions, safeguarding patients and ultimately delivering better quality of care.

2. What is the importance of screening in the healthcare industry?

The healthcare industry is highly regulated and although there is no legal requirement for hospitals to conduct background checks on their staff, most choose to do so because it can help mitigate risk and protect their reputation. And, as I mentioned earlier, it’s about securing patient safety and remaining true to their mission in providing excellent patient care. Beyond employment background checks, healthcare organizations who participate in federal healthcare programs such as Medicaid and Medicare need to ensure they are not engaging with excluded individuals and entities. Conducting exclusion screening on a monthly basis is the new industry standard the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) recommended in a 2013 Special Advisory Bulletin. Exclusion screening helps keep healthcare organizations compliant and avoid civil monetary penalties.

3. How does PreCheck help healthcare organizations with screening?

It can be difficult to implement a thorough, efficient background screening program for healthcare organizations, especially when the investigations need to be conducted in-house. For exclusion screening, specifically, conducting thorough searches in-house can be very time consuming and inefficient for larger organizations who have to check thousands of names each month. Not only does PreCheck have the expertise and knowledge to help care organizations establish an effective screening program, but we can help them implement their program in an efficient manner. We have the technology and partnerships to help streamline their processes, whether that means integrating with their applicant tracking system or providing applicants with the ability to schedule a drug screen online.

4. What makes PreCheck a better option than other screening providers?

What sets PreCheck apart is foremost our healthcare specific focus. There are many background screening firms out there, but we have focused exclusively on working with healthcare organizations since 1993. This means you can be confident that we’ve worked with a hospital or clinic likes yours hundreds of times before and we have the expertise to help streamline your processes and implement your desired screening program. When it comes to customer service, we’ve been very client-focused from the start and all of our products began as small projects for a specific customer. To this day, we continue to deliver personalized service to our clients, and our team won an award for Customer Service Department of the Year from the American Business Awards. Thanks to our customers who trust us for their background screening needs, we’ve made the Inc. 5000 list for the past four years and our mission is tied to healthcare specifically, something that you won’t find among most other screening companies.