Three E’s of Reinventing [Healthcare Compliance Tips]

Enact the “Three E’s of Reinventing” within your practice.

As shared throughout the series, it is critical that your practice has a strategic compliance plan that includes employees dedicated to implementing the strategies in my last post.

I also suggest you:

Explain the ‘why’ behind healthcare compliance

• Always explain the ‘why.’ Employees forget or lose interest if they do not see the meaning behind what they are doing or where they fit into the process.  Therefore, before assigning tasks, explain the new plan to your employees and why their involvement is necessary.  To make your job easier, soliciting their thoughts will include them in the blueprint phase and boost employee motivation.

Evaluate your employee’s strengths and weaknesses

• Evaluate your employees before assigning compliance tasks. Understanding this area will ensure they are qualified or allows additional time for compliance training.  To access this area, you can review previous performance reviews, issue skill set or personality tests, resumes, interviews etc.  Another suggestion is to hire an outside consultant to assist with compliance plan set-up or training, because they will foresee and rectify any challenges you will face.

Examine the areas of possible bias

• Remember certain parts of your compliance plan may pose a conflict of interest. You want to review your employee’s job titles carefully to ensure they are unbiased in their assigned compliance duties.  It’s not a best practice to have the coder oversee the auditing section due to potential bias in audit results.  It may be beneficial that they assist with auditing policies and procedures only and allow an outside source or management to perform the actual audit.

After utilizing my “Three E’s,” always be on the lookout for new or updated strategies while building or maintaining a compliance plan.  You can be creative with the layout and the tasks you assign your employees.  The main objective is to ensure the plan makes sense and is beneficial to the entire community (i.e., patients, employees).

Do you remember when I suggested tailoring compliance tasks to your specialty?

As a gift, I created the Compliance Resource Guide to be used immediately within your practice.  This list will aid you in training and assigning tasks; I also placed a star next to the role of management or consultant.

Last, monitor performance and switch tasks quarterly to counteract employee burnout.

I know implementing and monitoring a compliance program is tough, and government scrutiny doesn’t make it easier.  Your compliance plan and team set-up need not be perfect, but it must show you are putting a “good faith” effort towards maintaining one.

The good news is, you don’t have to shoulder the burden alone.  Your willingness to reinvent your team and make employee career goals your focus through development and progression speaks volumes.  A happy and collaborative team equals reduced errors, which leaves you time to relax and focus on other job functions.

**The opinions and observations from the group/author are not a promise to exempt your practice from fines and penalties.  Research, modify and tailor the advice to fit your specialty.