The Joint Commission's standards are clear: Healthcare organizations must verify their practitioners’ licenses and credentials at hire and at expiration. But depending on the state and the license type, this leaves a gap of several years where these organizations don’t have visibility into the current status of the practitioner’s credentials. This gray area presents an added layer of risk for provider organizations, some of whom still rely on outdated manual processes for primary source verifications due to resource constraints.

Human resources, compliance, and clinical leaders know that this issue affects the quality of the care their organizations deliver. In a 2024 survey of 150 healthcare executives, 88% reported that their organization verifies credentials more often than is required. Though annual verification was the most common frequency reported, half of respondents answered that they’d like to increase their frequency to at least every six months.

Finding the right frequency is a delicate balance of your organization’s risk and resources. Think of license and credential verification frequency as a graph where each organization’s position is determined by its risk tolerance and available resources. As your resource spend increases (in terms of both money and manpower), your risk simultaneously decreases—but only up to a certain threshold. The return on investment plateaus past that threshold, and your risk reduction is barely detectable.