By Hayden Shurgar
Chief Legal and Compliance Officer
What is compliance and how does it apply to me?
Healthcare compliance is defined as the ongoing process of meeting or exceeding the legal, ethical, and professional standards applicable to a particular organization. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has helped to define healthcare compliance through their compliance guidance documents.
This guidance calls for efforts to establish a compliance culture within organizations. A culture of compliance promotes prevention, detection, and resolution of instances of conduct that do not conform to government laws, public and private payor health care program requirements, and ethical and business policies.
The scope of compliance extends to many areas including patient care, billing, reimbursement, managed care contracting, research standards, OSHA, The Joint Commission standards, and HIPAA privacy and security, to name a few. EngageMED is committed to fostering a culture of compliance and educating each co-worker on his or her individual responsibilities.
EngageMED’s compliance program is designed to avoid or minimize liabilities, including legal or regulatory penalties and potential civil litigation. EngageMED is constantly evaluating the legal and regulatory environment and working with its clients to target compliance efforts while reviewing processes, policies, and procedures to define appropriate conduct, train the organization’s staff, and then monitor adherence to the processes, policies, and procedures.
Next Steps
EngageMED plans to spend the remainder of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 auditing, reviewing, and improving our compliance program.
I am excited to announce the start of several compliance efforts.
First, Jetlinda Scott and I are working on completing Little Rock Diagnostic Clinic’s OSHA Compliance Program. Implementation of this program involved work with Will Henson and Dennis Hignite, multiple site inspections, customization of the OSHA manual, and creation of a safety program. As soon as we are finished, we will begin to roll this out to all EngageMED clients’ clinics.
Second, EngageMED co-workers will soon become acquainted with a new handbook. The Executive Team has worked thoughtfully and meticulously, along with Directors and Managers, to retool the EngageMED handbook so that information is clearly communicated to our co-workers.
Third, EngageMED will debut a new Risk Compliance platform later this year. It is an exciting addition to the programs we already have in place, and I cannot wait to acquaint each of you with its tools and information.
I am excited about what we are doing, and I look forward to working with each of you in the coming months!
Hayden Shurgar, J.D., serves as Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at EngageMED, overseeing legal affairs and regulatory compliance. A Little Rock native with experience as deputy prosecuting attorney and partner at Wright, Lindsey & Jennings, she holds degrees from Southern Methodist University and the William H. Bowen School of Law.
