Top compliance tips for healthcare companies

It all started in the late 1990’s when healthcare professionals started using electronic forms of saving health care records. In 1996 came the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The main aim of this act was to ensure that despite any job movement employees could avail of health insurance easily. It’s only in last two years that healthcare compliance has become a part of the administration’s healthcare reforms wherein changes were introduced to the Health Information Technology Economic Clinical Health (HITECH) act, which made the American healthcare industry stand up and take notice. The US healthcare industry which comprised of a varied range of healthcare entities was required to follow the stringent compliance requirements, else face penalties. There were instances wherein some healthcare enterprises failed to meet the compliance regulations owing to a deficiency of a well planned IT governance plan.  Here are a few tips that can help such companies accomplish their compliance requirements easily. 

• Healthcare companies should necessarily have a clear cut organizational strategy in place to ensure the best security for all health information and documents they possess. A sound compliance plan is an absolute necessity since it provides the all-essential road map on how to secure compliance and also is a clear indicator if there are any compliance enforcement problems.
• It will certainly help healthcare companies if they appoint someone to take up the responsibility of all their healthcare regulatory compliance, since any kind of HIPAA compliance means that there needs to be coordination between technical, legal, HR and other departments internally and with related authorities externally. This implies that policies need to be defined clearly and explained to the entire workforce to ensure that it’s implemented and enforced properly. Companies could employ effective staff training programs as well to ensure that compliance standards are implemented effectively. Some companies prefer appointing a compliance committee to ensure complete adherence to the new regulations.
• Companies can also invest in systems that can efficiently monitor possible compliance issues and be reported early on.
• Opt for a compliance management solution that can keep you updated on all the latest versions and revisions of every act.
• A HITECH compliance solution that can also be delivered via the cloud would be an asset for any healthcare enterprise. The solution delivered via the cloud means that you will require no custom hardware requirements of any kind.
• Any healthcare regulatory compliance solution you opt for should keep you informed about what compliance tasks need to be performed and it should also be able to provide you access to tools to accomplish the same.

Healthcare companies should employ compliance leaders who would be able to fully grasp the diverse organizational dynamics within the company. Such compliance leaders would be able to keep a check on transactions and ensure that compliance is correctly being integrated in different processes within the company. 

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