5 Steps For Healthcare Compliance

By Joanna Belbey, Social Media and Compliance Specialist, Actiance

Despite the advances in technology, many healthcare firms are still heavily reliant on manual processes. As a result, about 56 percent of all healthcare expenses go to paying healthcare worker wages. However, healthcare firms are beginning to integrate more modern tools like digital records management solutions. To engage with younger customer bases, many firms are also turning to communications channels like social media. These changes to become more digitally oriented are helping healthcare firms remain competitive as the technology landscape evolves.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with changing industry regulations and litigation, and combat security threats and data leakage. As a result, the implementation of these new communications and social channels has put healthcare firms at risk for non-compliance. The financial impact of these risks, in addition to the harmful consequences on the brand, could ruin any firm. Rather than be scared of communications regulations, healthcare firms should continue to use a variety of communications and social channels. By following these best practices, healthcare organizations can continue to engage with patients, while still maintaining a practice of compliance.

1. Be aware of industry regulations for archive and record retention: Healthcare firms must clearly show industry regulators and courts that reasonable measures have been established to secure and retain sensitive patient data. Organizations need to determine whether data archives can address rigorous regulatory storage requirements instituted by industry regulators and the courts.
2. Establish a robust information management strategy: Strong information governance strategies must consider the growing amount of communication channels, not just traditional forms like email. Firms must be able to capture, archive, secure, manage, and make available the content from these communications and social channels to meet industry regulations and for litigation purposes.
3. Equip legal and compliance teams with intelligent tools and capabilities: Instead of relying on IT to manage information collection and preservation tasks, healthcare firms need to figure out ways they can streamline that process to reduce the pressure on IT and prevent bottlenecks. One solution could be permitting legal and compliance teams to oversee collection and preservation responsibilities, or run searches, filter content, and export data for review. An added benefit of this is the minimized legal risk, as legal teams can prevent any potential ruin of evidence almost immediately.
4. Merge tasks across multiple communications and channels, including social media: With the growing amount of communications and social channels to oversee, it’s the firm’s responsibility to show that they can consistently implement compliance and corporate governance standards across the organization. Opting for a comprehensive platform that can manage multiple communications and social channels, not only email, will assure firms that they have put in effect the necessary procedures to exhibit compliance.
5. Recover records in a timely manner: Regulators and courts of law often set time restraints for firms to provide the communications required. Failure to comply within the set deadlines could result in expensive sanctions or loss of court cases. Firms should consider whether their current archive provides quick search and filtering to enhance efficiency.