What has Compliance Become? 

Last month we posted an article that detailed one aspect of the role that compliance specialists play in many behavioral health organizations. While that article focused on the tenuous relationship they often have with the clinicians on staff, it’s true that the compliance specialists’ role is meant to achieve much more than just a title as “stickler” or “perfectionist” by their coworkers. 

Goals of Compliance

For those who are unaware, the compliance department works not only as a way to meet regulatory demands by accrediting bodies such as CARF or The Joint Commission, but also functions as an added layer to protect against fraud, waste, abuse, or misconduct by staff members, or the agency as a whole. This type of work is the heartbeat of any organization that is concerned about its influence in the community and can truly impact the lives of your patients, their families, and all those they come in contact with, as well as your staff.

In the state of this industry, which is rife with ethical complaints, court cases, and legal battles, it is of utmost importance to have a proactive compliance department and to create policies and practices that are more preventative in nature. Often, compliance departments and programs are engineered, per Medicaid regulations, with a few specific aims:

  1. To create and have accessible written policies, procedures, and standards of conduct that comply with all applicable Federal and State requirements.
  2. To designate a Compliance Officer who is responsible for developing and implementing policies and practices and to establish a Regulatory Compliance Committee that is equally accountable to senior management. 
  3. To design a system for training and education for all levels of employees and positions.
  4. To establish effective lines of communication between the compliance officer and the organization's employees.
  5. To enforce standards through well-publicized disciplinary guidelines.
  6. To create procedures within a system of dedicated staff for routine internal monitoring and auditing of compliance risks, prompt response to compliance issues as they are raised, investigation and correction of potential or identified problems promptly and thoroughly in order to maintain ongoing compliance.

Is it Working?

Although these may represent the intentions behind the role of compliance, often still the felt experience of many clinicians is that those reviewing their work are simply lying in wait, excitedly correcting spelling errors or pointing out what seems like insignificant mistakes. They may think that compliance specialists find great joy and their life’s purpose in pointing out when dates or times don’t match up, or when the metaphorical I’s and T’s need dotting and crossing. 

In many ways, this feels like what compliance has become, a shift in focus from pursuing agency standards to simply watching out for any clerical errors. 

At times this appears to be a byproduct of an antiquated way of working together, still relying on paper and pen methods or printing copies, working off of forms that are always needing an update or forgetting to use the most updated version, and just generally not having tools that are actually serving effective documentation practices. Compliance specialists would likely agree that it is not their intention to prioritize these concerns, however, without the tools that make these a non-issue, or at least an easier issue to correct, they end up spending a significant portion of their time and energy on these menial corrections. 

Another concern that occurs down the line, is that although you may have taken great care to create policies, practices, and procedures to ensure compliance, when is the last time a staff member read and used their policy manual? Are the lines of communication between the compliance officer and employees more theoretical in nature? How is ongoing education and training implemented into organizational practice? What are the messages, if any, that you are sending to your employees about compliance? 

When You Partner with Alleva

With Alleva, our model has always been to provide you with the tools needed, so that you can get back to what you do best, compliance department notwithstanding. When you digitize your practice with Alleva, we make it easy to focus on the important things: like pushing yourself to be your best for your community that deserves it. 

Free up your clinician’s time by avoiding repetitive data entry, and make accessing agency policies and procedures a breeze. Allow your compliance specialists to focus on less trivial tasks, with built-in automated auditing and compliance features, and create a work environment that thrives on mutual respect, community, and a drive to pursue excellence. When you partner with the friendliest EMR platform around, you can make your humdrum, routine tasks easy to accomplish. To request a demo, schedule with us today!