How to Complete a Proper Nemt Driver Background Check
You can’t hire just anyone to drive for your NEMT business. You need a team that’s experienced, patient, and trustworthy. Background checks help solidify your choice by looking into your employees’ driving history. You may not personally think it’s right to conduct background checks as a prerequisite of employment, but it’s important in the transportation industry for a number of reasons. For starters, you’re working with elderly and sometimes vulnerable passengers, so you want drivers who are serious about safety in charge. Additionally, your business’s reputation matters. If your drivers are continuously getting bad reviews, people will talk and clients will take their business elsewhere. Now that you know you need to conduct background checks, it’s important to understand what that consists of.
Nemt Driver Background Checks
A background check is a comprehensive investigation of the candidate’s personal and driving history. Once a potential employee accepts your job offer, they are also signing off on allowing you to conduct a background check before they’re officially hired. The employee must successfully pass the background check to become an employee at your company. The following areas will be examined during the check:
Driving Records
You must obtain a copy of the driver’s driving record. The law requires that you obtain a record for each state that the driver held a license in the past three years. These copies should be kept for as long as the driver is employed at your company.
Safety Performance History
If the prospective employee worked for any Department of Transportation-regulated businesses in the last three years, a safety performance history must be obtained from each of the companies.
Drug and Alcohol-Related Violations
There are a couple of ways you can check on previous drug or alcohol-related violations. First, after receiving written consent from the prospective employee, you can reach out to the person’s previous employers and ask them to provide a performance history, including any drug and alcohol-related violations. This information will give you an accurate picture of their previous work experience and performance, so you can make sure it aligns with what they’ve told you.
Drug Tests
According to state and local mandates, you will likely have to test your drivers for drug use before they are employed. The standard Department of Transportation drug test tests for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, methamphetamines, and phencyclidine. If a prospective employee’s test comes back positive for any of these drugs, you can’t legally employ them. If the test comes back inconclusive, you will need to test again until you receive a definitive result. If the test comes back negative, you can legally employ the person. Drug tests are valuable because they ensure that the people responsible for transporting and caring for your patients won’t be putting them in any danger as a result of being under the influence.
Physical Examinations
The physical exam is built to ensure employees can properly perform their driving tasks. This includes the actual driving, but also the ability to operate a wheelchair lift ramp, properly fasten a passenger into a wheelchair van, lift a passenger when needed, and more. NEMT drivers’ jobs can be incredibly hands on if you’re regularly completing wheelchair and stretcher trips. Testing physical benchmarks is important in understanding if a person will succeed as an NEMT driver.
Conduct best-practice background checks
If you’re going to go through the process of conducting background checks, you want to make sure you’re doing them correctly. Below are a few tips to ensure that you’re running checks efficiently.
Understand Your State and Local Laws
Background checks often coincide with laws set forth by the government. Since the two are so closely related, you’ll want to make sure you have an in-depth understanding of what’s expected of you. Check in with your local and state Medicaid agencies, local transportation agencies, and become familiar with any state law that involves transportation and Medicaid transportation.
Partner With a Reliable Background Check Company
You might think it makes sense to run the background check on your own and save some money, but hiring an experienced background check agency to assist you when necessary is the best option. This way, you know everything is accurate.
Follow the same process for every prospective employee
Workplace discrimination is a serious accusation, which is why it’s so important to be unbiased and fair, beginning with the hiring process. A background check company can help ensure this is happening.
Have drug tests reviewed by professionals
Drug tests are almost always done through third-party companies, so you can be sure that the data you receive is accurate and untampered with. If for some reason you’re still conducting drug tests on-premise, you should re-think that process to ensure accuracy.
Obtain Clear and Written Consent Before the Background Check
All prospective employees must consent in writing that they give you the right to conduct a background check. If you do not receive this consent in writing, you do not have legal authorization to run the check.
Discuss any findings with the applicant
The applicant has a right to receive a copy of the background check results, if they wish. Make sure you discuss any findings that prevent the employee from getting hired.
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