CASE STUDY
Cleveland Clinic Case Study
In healthcare, the people who keep an organization running are not only the ones on payroll. Contractors, visiting researchers, students, and volunteers move through hospital facilities every day, and every one of them has to be background-checked, vaccinated, trained, and granted the right network and building access before they can step on site.
Now do that roughly 38,000 times a year, across 23 hospitals and 276 outpatient facilities, under the kind of regulatory scrutiny that comes with regular audits. For most of its history, Cleveland Clinic managed exactly this — manually, with spreadsheets and office file folders, run by a small Security Administrative Services team. It worked, but it left little room to scale and plenty of room for delay and error. That is where Rival Workflow comes in.
Industry: Healthcare | Product: Rival Workflow | Use case: Non-employee onboarding
Background
Cleveland Clinic is a nonprofit academic medical center with 23 hospitals and 276 outpatient facilities in locations around the globe. Alongside its own staff of 70,000 employees, it works with roughly 38,000 non-employees each year to deliver on its mission of caring for life, advancing health through research, and educating those who serve. These non-employee personnel range from contractors and visiting researchers to students and volunteers — some on site daily, others working remotely.
The challenge: a high-volume process, managed by hand
“We don’t allow anyone on property without being processed through, and they have to pass a background check.”
Department Manager, Security Administrative Services, Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland Clinic’s global network relies on an intricate onboarding process to bring non-employee staff up to speed quickly, accurately, and in full compliance with healthcare regulations. It spans several interdependent steps — background checks, vaccination records, training modules, and both network and physical building access — that must be completed in sequence, partly online and partly in person. Transparency and compliance are critical, since medical facilities are subject to regular audits.
Despite the complexity and the stakes, all of it was managed manually by a small Security Administrative Services team using spreadsheets and office file folders — a setup exposed to delays, errors, and inefficiency, with little room to scale or optimize.
The solution: Rival Workflow
Cleveland Clinic implemented Rival Workflow to streamline non-employee onboarding across three dimensions.
Automation at scale
By digitizing and automating critical onboarding forms and processes, Cleveland Clinic eliminated manual tasks and administrative bottlenecks — ensuring non-employee personnel are ready to contribute on day one while saving significant operational time.
Connection across departments
Rival Workflow integrates cross-departmental onboarding tasks, uniting internal teams and external contributors and clearing non-employee staff for onsite work with zero disruption.
Compliance through standardization
By standardizing form fields, maintaining data accuracy, and simplifying reporting, Cleveland Clinic uses Rival Workflow to ensure audit readiness and information integrity.
Rival Workflow in action
Clearance before access
Cleveland Clinic follows stringent protocols for onsite personnel — background checks, vaccination requirements, and disease testing that can vary by facility. Rival Workflow simplifies tracking of these clearing steps, ensuring every requirement is completed and verified before onsite access is granted, without the heavy administrative burden.
Managing badging & identity
A badging process that previously took 15–20 steps to update now takes just 3–5. Processing 200–300 badges daily, the team saves significant time. Cleveland Clinic also built preferred names into the workflow, so badges reflect each person’s chosen identifiers.
Scaling a learning institution
With up to 6,000 students in the nursing program alone each semester, Rival Workflow’s bulk-upload capabilities eliminate hours of manual data entry and launch thousands of onboarding events simultaneously — bringing students in cleared, compliant, and ready to learn.
A trusted, long-term partnership
For [X] years, Cleveland Clinic has trusted Rival to manage the complexities of a world-class healthcare institution. As the partnership has grown, so has Rival’s ability to address Cleveland Clinic’s evolving needs with precision and care.
“I feel that Rival understands the Cleveland Clinic. They understand that obviously we need this system in order for us to be an up-and-running hospital within the United States. Things happen quickly when they need to.”
Department Manager, Security Administrative Services, Cleveland Clinic
Calculating the ROI
In 12 months, the results spoke for themselves:
Are you ready?
Rival will help you take the hard work out of workflow. See how Rival Workflow can streamline onboarding across your organization — at any scale. Talk to an expert.
