Your Reasons to Delay Compliance Implementation are GONE!
Healthcare compliance has been a hot topic in recent years
and continues to become more urgent due to the increase in enforcement
efforts, audits, and various types of investigations. Like most of you
probably tell your patients, "It’s less expensive and easier to prevent
or maintain your health vs wait until the condition(s) have worsened and
then have the stress and expense of working to repair it." Well, the
same general rule of thumb applies with compliance. Practices can
prevent errors, minimize the risk of audits, recoupment, denials, and
many types of investigations (HIPAA, OSHA, Fraud, Abuse, etc) just
simply by making a good faith effort to understand and implement the
compliance guidelines into your practice.
In truth, there is no longer "under the radar" or "off the
grid," like some hope to accomplish. We no longer have the "if" an
issue occurs, but rather "when" it does. Yes, this even applies to cash
practices as many state organizations are actively investigating
reports or complaints from patients, workforce members and peers.
Compliance helps all practices (including cash only practices) to
address important guidelines such as advertising, payment guidelines,
hardship, discounting, and much more. Simply put, compliance plan
implementation serves as the foundation to your practice, much like a
blueprint to a building.
Advancements in technology, enforcement of billing and
documentation guidelines, and increasing risks to protected information
must all be appropriately managed in the daily operations of health care
facilities. While most practices understand the necessity of
appropriately implementing policies and procedures to minimize risk and
adhere to guidelines, practices have struggled to properly implement
these guidelines due to:
1. Time available
2. Expense to learn and incorporate compliance guidelines
3. Uncertainty of where to learn the need-to-know
information, access to the materials needed, and/or training and
implementation support. While bits and pieces of compliance guidelines
can be found in many places, it is difficult to find all the information
you need in one place. This leaves many practices with incomplete
compliance programs and thus a heightened risk of audits/investigations
of various types, penalties and cash flow reduction, and more.
Like most practices, yours may face one or more of those
aforementioned obstacles. With that in mind, we would like to introduce
to you, Chiropractic Compliance Solutions (). This organization has an
excellent track record in compliance training and has recently updated
all of their training programs to be even more helpful, easier to time
manage, and more affordable to practices.
Chiropractic Compliance Solutions (CCS)
also offers auditing and compliance related programs and services that
are in high demand for health care practices. Just a couple of these
valuable services/programs include:
Online Compliance Training:
Module based online training that allows you to work at your
own pace! Module lessons are under 30 minutes to allow ease of time
management and implementation. Modules come complete with action steps,
editable policy and procedure samples, as well as the forms necessary
for each lesson. All this and more is available to practices including
HelpDesk support with CCS professionals.
Security Risk Assessment Tool:
Per the HIPAA Security requirements, as well as Meaningful
Use requirements, practices must perform a Security Risk at a minimum of
once per year. This very easy to navigate tool provides mini lessons
for training and understanding each topic, policy and procedure
templates, necessary forms, help desk support, reporting mechanism for
compliance records and accountability, and more.
So don't wait any longer to make compliance a priority to
your practice. You have excellent resources available to aid your
practice in meeting these guidelines and minimizing your risk of many
types of obstacles and penalties!
Brandy Brimhall CPC, CMCO, CCCPC, CPCO, CPMA