Every healthcare facility knows the pressure of filling shifts quickly while still ensuring patient safety and quality of care. The bridge between those two demands is credentialing—the system that verifies a nurse’s training, license, and professional record.
Gaps in credentialing can create risks, limit access to qualified talent, and slow down staffing responsiveness.
But when done correctly, credentialing strengthens your staffing pool, supports your float pool strategy, and ensures that you can trust the clinicians providing care to your patients.
What is nurse credentialing?
Nurse credentialing is the process of verifying a clinician’s qualifications, licenses, background, and competencies before they provide patient care.
Verifying nurse credentials is important not only because it ensures that your nursing staff is qualified and competent, but it also helps you comply with state and federal requirements. It’s also a key step in effective nurse recruitment, helping you attract and retain qualified clinicians.
The importance of nurse credentialing cannot be ignored.
Why nurse credentialing is important
Your facility’s ability to deliver safe, high-quality care depends on more than the number of nurses on the schedule—it depends on clinicians being credentialed and ready to practice.
Why? So many reasons, here are a few:
- Credentialing verifies that each clinician has the knowledge and skills necessary to provide safe patient care.
- Credentialing confirms that each clinician has made a personal investment of time, energy, and money to earn their professional title.
- Credentialing validates that a nurse's professional titles are more than fancy words on special pieces of paper.
- Credentialing assures the public, and therefore any patient receiving services, that yes, this clinician is specially trained to take care of them.
- Credentialing ensures healthcare facilities maintain regulatory compliance.
The nurse credentialing process is comprehensive for a reason—it protects patients, maintains compliance, and builds a qualified, ready workforce.
Which brings us to the following question:
Who is responsible for verifying nurse credentials in a facility?
The responsibility for nurse credentialing varies depending on the size and type of healthcare facility. For example, large healthcare facilities or systems may have a dedicated credentialing team or office, while smaller facilities will often rely on the staffing coordinator or scheduler. However, the goal is always the same: ensure that every clinician providing care is fully qualified and compliant.
Credentialing or medical staff office
Hospitals and large health systems often have a dedicated credentialing or medical staff office (MSO) team to manage the credential verification process. They verify licenses, certifications, education, and work history, and they keep facilities in compliance with the standards of accrediting bodies like The Joint Commission.
A medical staff office isn’t the only MSO in healthcare—learn what a Management Services Organization (MSO) is and how it impacts facilities.
Human resources and compliance officers
HR departments often work alongside credentialing teams to maintain personnel records and conduct audits. Compliance staff monitor credentialing practices to protect the facility from regulatory or legal risks.
Directors of nursing and department leaders
In smaller facilities such as skilled nursing centers or clinics, the Director of Nursing (DON), nurse managers, or administrators are often responsible for ensuring staff credentials are up-to-date, even if they don’t handle every verification step themselves.
Third-party credentialing services
Some organizations partner with outside credentialing verification organizations (CVOs) to streamline the process. This is common when internal resources are limited or when a facility needs to onboard clinicians quickly.
Bottom line: No matter who oversees it, leadership is ultimately accountable for credentialing. Every facility must ensure nurses are credentialed before they provide care. Facilities that manage it proactively (or partner with platforms that streamline it) gain a stronger staffing pool and greater peace of mind.
What is the nurse credentialing process?
Nurse credentialing is the structured process of verifying a clinician’s qualifications before they provide patient care. For facilities, it’s a safeguard that ensures compliance, patient safety, and trust.
The process can be time-intensive, often taking several weeks—or even months—depending on state requirements, the complexity of the role, and how quickly documents and verifications are submitted.
Here’s a breakdown of the nurse credentialing requirements, grouped by type.
License and education verification
The first step is confirming that a nurse’s education and licensure meet the requirements for their role:
- Verify nursing degree(s) and transcripts.
- Confirm active state licensure through the board of nursing.
- Check certifications (such as BLS, ACLS, or specialty credentials).
Background checks
In healthcare, background checks are a fundamental step to ensure patient safety by screening for any history that could present risks:
- Criminal background checks.
- Review of sanctions or exclusions, such as Office of Inspector General (OIG), System for Award Management (SAM).
- Verification of disciplinary actions or malpractice history.
Experience and reference verification
Facilities need to know that a nurse’s skills align with patient care needs. This step includes:
- Verifying employment history and clinical experience.
- Checking professional references to confirm competency and reliability.
- Matching clinical experience to the specific role or unit requirements.
Medical requirements
To ensure a safe workplace, facilities also verify that nurses meet health standards:
- Vaccination records (e.g., Hepatitis B, MMR, COVID-19, flu).
- Tuberculosis testing.
- Drug screening, when applicable.
Ongoing monitoring and credential management
Credentialing doesn’t end once a nurse is hired. Facilities must continue monitoring to stay compliant:
- Tracking license and certification renewals.
- License monitoring for new disciplinary actions or sanctions.
- Recording continuing education requirements.
- Updating records for changes in scope of practice.
Common challenges in nurse credentialing
Even though credentialing is essential, it often presents hurdles in nurse hiring for healthcare facilities. Understanding the common challenges can help leaders anticipate issues and strengthen their processes.
- Time-consuming processes: Manual verification—such as calling schools, boards of nursing, or previous employers—can take weeks. This slows down hiring and makes it harder to respond quickly to staffing needs.
- Inconsistent recordkeeping: When credential files are stored in different places or updated inconsistently, facilities risk missing license renewals, certification expirations, or disciplinary updates. These gaps can create compliance problems.
- State-by-state variations: Credentialing requirements differ across state boards of nursing. Each state may have unique timelines, renewal cycles, or fees. Facilities that staff across multiple states must navigate a patchwork of rules.
- Compliance risks: Incomplete or outdated credentialing exposes facilities to serious consequences, including regulatory fines, potential lawsuits, and even loss of accreditation.
How Nursa helps facilities manage credentialing
Traditional credentialing processes can be slow and fragmented, but Nursa streamlines verification to make it faster, more frequent, and often provides more current information than verifying credentials with standard systems like Nursys or First Advantage alone.
This ensures facilities get quick access to credentialed per diem clinicians while maintaining strict safety and compliance standards.
License and credential verification
Nursa verifies clinician licenses and credentials proactively:
- Clinicians are checked against state boards of nursing each time they provide their license information.
- License status is re-verified whenever a clinician requests a shift.
- This frequent cycle means information is often fresher and more reliable than traditional one-time verification systems.
Background checks
Nursa uses a layered approach to background screening to protect facilities and patients: basic background checks and advanced background checks.
Basic background checks:
These are automatically run when a clinician first joins Nursa and again each time a clinician requests to work shifts.
- Screens against the OIG’s List of Excluded Individuals/Entities (LEIE) and the SAM
- Includes checks against the National Sex Offender Registry and other local exclusion lists
Clinicians who fail these checks are banned from the Nursa app.
Learn more about how our Facility Screening Lists help facilities manage and monitor clinician eligibility.
Advanced background checks:
These checks are conducted when clinicians are scheduled for a shift.
- Includes federal criminal background checks, as well as state-level checks such as Utah’s Direct Access Clearance System (DACS) and Colorado Adult Protective Services (CAPS)
- Performed through trusted providers like Checkr and First Advantage
With Nursa, credentialing and background verification aren’t a one-time event—they’re ongoing, proactive, and designed to help facilities maintain confidence in the clinicians they bring to the bedside.
Facilities can also review full clinician profiles and background check summaries directly in the app—here’s how to download a clinician’s profile and background check.
6 Best practices for credentialing nurses at your facility
Credentialing doesn’t have to be a bottleneck.
By putting the right credentialing systems/software and habits in place, facilities can reduce risks, improve efficiency, and ensure their clinicians are always ready to provide care. Consider these best practices for solutions to nurse credentialing hurdles:
1. Centralize records in one system
Keep all credentialing documents—licenses, certifications, health records, and background checks—in a single, accessible platform. Centralization reduces errors and makes audits easier.
2. Automate reminders for renewals
Set up alerts for upcoming license renewals, certification expirations, and continuing education (CE) requirements. Automated reminders prevent lapses that could jeopardize compliance.
3. Train HR and scheduling staff
Ensure that staff responsible for onboarding, scheduling, and compliance understand credentialing requirements. Training helps prevent missteps that could delay onboarding or expose the facility to risk.
4. Integrate credentialing with staffing workflows
Link credential checks directly to scheduling processes so that only compliant clinicians can be assigned shifts. This ensures patient safety while streamlining workforce management.
With Nursa’s Auto-Schedule feature, healthcare facilities can instantly fill shifts with clinicians who meet specific qualifications.
5. Conduct periodic audits
Regularly review credential files to confirm accuracy and completeness. Audits help catch gaps early and demonstrate compliance during inspections or accreditation reviews.
6. Stay current with state and federal regulations
Monitor changes from boards of nursing and accrediting bodies. Staying up to date ensures your processes align with evolving requirements and prevents costly oversights.
Facilities that treat credentialing as a continuous, integrated process—not a one-time hurdle—are better equipped to maintain compliance, protect patients, and keep staffing flexible.
Related: Healthcare staffing platform buyer’s guide.
Explore more healthcare facility best practices on Nursa
Nurse credentialing isn’t just another administrative burden on an ambiguous “to-do” list. It’s an essential step towards maintaining patient safety and ensuring workforce readiness and reliability.
Nursa’s proactive and layered approach to nurse credentialing prioritizes security and trust so that healthcare facilities can be as confident in their contingent staffing decisions as they are in their in-house staffing roster.
Explore how Nursa can help facilities instantly fill shifts from their preferred credentials.
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