Compliance. It’s a less-than-inspiring word. For many, it sounds onerous and tyrannical. Do this, or else. At the very least, it represents red tape and fiery hoops to jump through to conduct business. If you’re involved in providing healthcare, especially if you’re contracted to provide services to Medicare or Medicaid members, you know this word all too well. But what if that word represented more than just your obligation to various regulatory agencies? What if regularity compliance also represented an opportunity to do business better?
There is no shortage of regulatory agencies watching your business in America. When you’re a healthcare provider, the list grows exponentially. You have the Drug Enforcement Administration and Food & Drug Administration monitoring prescribed medicines and treatments, there’s the Department of Health & Human Services along with the Office of the Inspector General keeping an eye out for fraud, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is measuring the quality of patient care. There are accreditation standards from agencies like the Joint Commission, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, brand audits for the products you use…the list goes on.
Of course, none of these agencies are out to cause undue heartache for your business. It’s an important part of consumer oversight and protection. We are, after all, talking primarily about patient safety. There will always be a need for thoughtful and comprehensive oversight.
So what are all these agencies really after?
Data
Data from your day-to-day operations. Data that you need to manage anyway in order to conduct efficient business and provide the best outcomes for your patients. Some of the key data points they are interested in include:
- Sanitation logs
- Temperature logs for sensitive medications
- Equipment calibration logs
- Room cleanliness/setup checklists
- Fire and safety protocols
- Regional manager visit preparation
- Brand standards audit checklists
These sound like things you might want to keep track of anyway, right? If regulatory agencies can take your data and make decisions about your compliance and accreditation, why couldn’t you take that data and decide how to improve your business? You don’t need the threat of an audit to see how keeping careful logs on equipment calibration and managing temperatures for sensitive medications can help you to manage your operations better.
If your company still has many paper-based processes to track operations and compliance, you may not only be wasting a ton of data but a lot of your employees’ and customers’ time too.
Digitizing Compliance Processes and Data
From treatment room preparation to emergency preparedness, defining, capturing, and maintaining quality data is paramount. Even before the moment a patient first contacts your office to schedule an appointment, the right tools need to be in place to ensure that healthcare operations information is both accessible and usable.
With a program like the OpsAnalitica Platform in place, that enables you to digitize outdated paper processes, not only are you maintaining that data is in a flexible, accessible format, but you’re making the recording of that information a simpler and more seamless process for your employees to access and use.
How is Compliance an Opportunity?
The logs you are required to maintain for things like sanitation, hazardous waste, and equipment performance can provide the information needed to produce better results for everyone. And when you digitize the logs and checklists you use to manage these key operational functions, you have the chance to evaluate those lists and see what you really need.
You can eliminate not only redundancy but flat-out lack of need. You’ll see what’s become obsolete and stop asking your employees to do work that no longer has any value. You can keep what you need and make it more usable than ever. Not just for the agencies you need to appease but for your business as a whole.
The data you need to stay compliant can be the data that allows you to run your business at a higher level. The OpsAnalitica Platform will help you harness the power of that information.