A healthcare practice faces multiple regulatory bodies that can audit it, and postponing preparation could be catastrophic. The audit process varies by type, and practices need proactive compliance to protect themselves.
What's at stake if a practice continues to delay addressing it? What if, heaven forbid, the audit happens? What are the first few steps of an audit and what does that usually look like?
Well, it depends what kind of audit you're talking about.
Oh, okay. How many regulatory boards are there that can audit you?
You could be under review by OSHA. You could be under review, you know, by the OCR on the HIPAA side of it. Certainly any payer, whether it's a commercial payer or Medicare, you know, federal or within the state, they can ask for records and review documentation and see if it meets compliance in that manner. Your state boards, if patients file complaints, they're looking into your system and they want to know, you know, what's going on and looking at your documentation. When we talk about compliance and the complexity, I mean, there's way more, uh, and of course you've heard me say the word targets, but there is, it's just a target-rich environment overall. And I'm not saying that to scare anybody. You know, because we figured out how to help that and address that. It is what it is. And so it's all about how do you move forward and make sure you have the operational infrastructure in order to have your practice protected, have you protected, your practice protected, your patients protected, because that's a big part of this as well.
