2026 Screening: A Healthcare Program Tune-Up
Identify new screening risks and trends that might be affecting your program, plus solutions to those gaps including how to measure your program’s health going forward.
As we continue into 2026, take some time to perform a check-up on your current screening programs' health. This can include identifying new risks and trends that can affect your screening plus potential solutions and practices to keep your screening healthy.
Emerging Risks and Industry Trends
The rise of AI tools has been an emerging risk for employers, independent of what industry the organization is in. The risk of bad actors penetrating your workforce seems bigger than ever. Employers have seen AI chat tools used to answer questions while on a video interview. Deepfakes in virtual interactions are easier than ever to access; stolen identities or credentials are being used, and fake documents can be generated in moments to prove experience.
Another trend for healthcare is the transition from one-and-done screening to more rescreening and ongoing monitoring. Relying on only one-and-done screening can open your organization up to risk including reputation, financial, and legal risks.
Healthcare Screening: Gaps and Solutions
Risk Intelligence Strategies
With the emerging risks including AI-enabled identity and employment fraud targeting workforces, there are several combinations of general risk intelligence strategies that organizations could use to combat the threat:
ID Verification with Biometrics
Document Analysis
Alternative Employment Sources
State Sponsored Risk Analysis
Resume Comparison
Monitoring (Criminal & Arrest, Healthcare Sanctions, Professional Licenses, Driver Record, and Global Sanctions check)
Expand Your Screening Scope
Expanding your current scope strategy shouldn’t be an intimidating task. Instead of implementing entirely new processes, this is a way to capitalize and strengthen the searches you already do. For example, you can:
Include alias names in your searches
Add robust credential and employment verification
Expand your criminal record searches to all relevant jurisdictions and watchlists (including healthcare exclusion lists)
Update your internal hiring policies to reflect these fixes
Layered Defenses Against Bad Actors
No single tool is 100% foolproof against determined bad actors. The goal should be a multi-layered screening defense. This can include a technology layer, a human layer, and a process layer.
Consider introducing internal checks such as rigorous document authentication and resume/CV comparison. Also consider incorporating an in-person element for high-risk roles, so you can later compare it to the person who shows up for day one or the drug test. These extra steps, applied selectively based on role risk, add another hurdle for imposters.
As always, and with any program, it’s important to measure KPIs that can identify the health of your screening program. Program KPIs worth measuring can include:
Candidate Experience
Workforce Coverage
Incidents Detected/ Prevented
Program Review Cycle
If you want to learn more, including a fireside chat Q&A, check out our webinar recording that covers all of this, and more. Watch it here.
Release Date: April 1, 2026
Joe Conerty
Joe Conerty is a Strategic Enterprise Sales Executive at HireRight, where he helps healthcare organizations modernize and strengthen their background screening programs. With over 13 years of experience in the screening industry, Joe specializes in working with large, complex health systems to improve onboarding efficiency, reduce risk, and support compliance across diverse clinical and non-clinical roles. He is Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certified and brings a consultative approach grounded in long-term partnership, operational insight, and measurable outcomes.
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