Untitled Document

Industry News >

Untitled Document

Cited from napbs Journal December 2008
National Association Professional Background Screeners

Best Practices Accreditation Checklist - A Tool To Prepare for NAPBS Accreditation

By Eric Rinsky-President of Apollo Services Inc.

By now, many of you have seen the article published by the Accreditation Task Force regarding the NAPBS® Accreditation Program in last week's NAPBS Thursday Letter. The message is loud and clear: Start preparing for the NAPBS Accreditation Program now because the task force has every intention of rolling this out at the annual conference in April 2009. On behalf of The Best Practices SubCommittee for the Accreditation Checklist, Eric Rinsky and Dave Furey presented a checklist at the Mid-year Meeting in Arizona to help member companies prepare for the upcoming accreditation. Joining the presentation were three long-time members of the NAPBS and the Best Practices Committee, representing different CRAs. Kerstin Bagus, Judy Gootkind and Nancy Roberts all spoke about their experience with the audit process and the benefits of preparation. For those of you who did not attend, these three speakers exemplified professionalism with their knowledge regarding the audit process and our industry in general.

The presentation can now be found on the NAPBS Website under "Membership Home." There you will see "Accreditation Program" where you can tind the standards and the checklist. Additionally, you can tind the actual presentation we gave (NAPBSAccreditation Checklist Presentation) under "Conference Presentations."

The checklist is a simple document encompassing the standards' criteria. It is how your company will use this checklist that will matter. This can be a dynamic tool for accreditation or any pre-audit if used properly.

How the tool can be used and what it can enable your organization to do:

  • It provides a raw, realistic perspective on what policies and procedures are in place and what policies and procedures still need implementation.
  • The checklist requires materials to prove compliance in specific areas. An actual audit would require the same. Therefore, it will help to establish which materials are needed for an auditor.
  • Achecklist will serve as the foundation for information pertaining to any audits.
  • It allows you to step outside of your organization to gain a perspective of your own operations.
  • It assigns an auditor. The auditor will ask to examine any existing written policies and/or procedures which you may have produced. It will identify these items or lack of items per accreditation standards in your self-audit.
  • Additionally, the auditor will ask to interview key personnel or workers in order to develop (or update) their understanding of the operations being audited. During this stage of the audit, the auditor will typically look for exhibits (flowchart, narrative or questionnaire).
  • It establishes a timeline. This checklist will only work until the accreditation is rolled out. It can then be used for any type of future audit.

Helpful Industry Resources for Policy Writing:

  • NAPBS (www.napbs.com)
    • Provider guidelines
    • Industry conferences-past vand present
    • White papers
    • SOCIT (Standardization of Common Industry Terms)
    • Best Practices Verifications Guide for Employers
  • RB Publications (www.brbpub.com)
  • Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov)

The focus of our presentation was to make the checklist available to membership in order to help prepare your company for the upcoming NAPBS accreditation process. This means taking a pro-active approach instead of waiting for the accreditation to come and then feeling unprepared or overwhelmed.

Again, the checklist itself is a simple document. However, if used effectively it will serve as an extremely powerful tool for the accreditation process and other future audits.

"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. J) (Confucius).

For additional information please contact:

Eric Rinsky, president
Apollo Services Ine.
eric@apolloservices.org
DaveFurey, technical operations manager
Validex
dfurey@validex.com

[Read Other News]

Untitled Document

*** We gather articles of interest regarding our profession from some of the leading authorities on computerized online database investigations and post-processing intelligence analysis. Some publish their works in professional journals and trade magazines that are copyright protected and are reproduced here in full. We give full credit to each of these very talented authors, and express no opinion, warranty, (implied or explicit) over their comments or content. We do not edit or abstract their work, only re-produce here and give them full credit. This is not a license to reproduce the articles that we have selected for re-broadcast here.

 

Investigative Consultants, Inc.

2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Suite 813
Washington DC 20006

Phone: (202) 237-1500
Fax: (202) 237-8642
E-mail: DBerlin@icioffshore.com

 
Copyright © 1995- Investigative Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

ARADS®, ColdChek™, DirectChek™, DockuChek®, EuroChek®, Global Scan®, IdentiChek®, IncomeTrust™, and TerrorChek® are Trademarks of Investigative Consultants, Inc. All Rights Reserved.