Defining function-based access for non-hospital personnel, including Technical Product Service, in healthcare facilities.
HWASC develops voluntary consensus standards for the certification of non-hospital personnel who perform job tasks in healthcare facilities — governing certification and accreditation requirements, competency verification, vendor credentialing, and vendor-access controls for supplier organizations, Vendor Credentialing Organizations, and the professionals themselves.
Hospitals are required to verify that the people performing work inside their facilities are competent to perform it. So the question that decides everything is simple: does vendor credentialing verify competence — or does it verify access?
The definitions answer it:
The process of collecting and verifying credentials.
The assessment process that confirms competence.
Confirming that a credential is valid and current.
Credentialing collects and verifies documents — it grants access. It was never designed to assess competence, and it does not claim to. Certification is the function that confirms competence — and for the non-hospital workforce, it does not yet exist. See the full comparison →
A credential verifies access for a visit — not competency to perform a job in a healthcare environment.
Consider who walks through a hospital's doors on any given day:
There to visit a loved one. Not credentialed — simply verified at the door through ordinary visitor management.
There to meet, present, and discuss. No job task is performed. Ordinary facility access control is the right tool for the visit.
There to set up instrumentation, attend the procedure, and provide technical guidance on the product they represent. This is the performance of a service in clinical space.
The requirement follows the function, not the person. That is function-based access — and defining it is exactly what HWASC standards exist to do.
The consequence of today's model is an accountability gap. Hospitals are measured on quality and safety — CMS quality measures, star ratings, accreditation findings, infection rates. The non-hospital workforce inside those same walls is measured on document compliance: immunizations on file, training attested, badge issued. Every day, hundreds of thousands of these professionals perform job tasks that flow directly into the hospital's quality and safety outcomes — yet nothing in the system measures their competence to perform that work.
And there is no nationally accepted standard governing how these personnel are credentialed, how their competency is verified, or how facility access is aligned to the functions they actually perform. Requirements change from institution to institution, with no common framework underneath. The hospital carries all of the accountability; the credential that let the person in the door never asked the question the hospital is answerable for. The visit is credentialed — the job is not.
HWASC exists to close that gap — through open, balanced, consensus-based standards development and evidence-based competency frameworks that serve the entire healthcare community.
Our accredited scope covers three connected areas of work.
Voluntary consensus standards governing certification requirements, accreditation requirements, competency verification, vendor credentialing, and vendor-access controls for supplier organizations, Vendor Credentialing Organizations (VCOs), and non-hospital personnel who access healthcare facilities.
Explore our standards work →A cross-cutting framework establishing common competency, organizational-conformity, and verifiable identifier and chain-of-custody requirements across the healthcare workflows these personnel participate in — including procurement, value analysis, product-use documentation, and post-procedure billing.
Read the full scope →Conformity-assessment criteria and use-context performance qualification for implantable devices, markers, and related products used in patients undergoing diagnostic imaging or radiation therapy — including radiolucent and radiotherapy-compatible devices.
Composites & use-context qualification →Alongside our standards development activities, HWASC is convening a national initiative to define the competencies required of Healthcare Industry Representatives through a formal Job Task Analysis — the evidence-based foundation for an ISO/IEC 17024 personnel certification program.
We are seeking Founding Subject Matter Experts and Founding Sponsors from across the healthcare ecosystem.
Whether you represent a hospital, a supplier organization, a credentialing program, or the professionals themselves — there is a seat at the table for you.