Leading the change: iPRO’s simple steps to compliance

Following iPRO CEO Oliver Roydhouse’s presentation at the VHA and ACHG Governance Conference Leading the change, here’s his simple steps to compliance best practice as shared with VHA members and healthcare attendees.

1)   Understand the issues

When establishing compliance best practice, begin by figuring out which type of compliance program will best fit into your organisation and operating environment.

2)   Define stakeholder requirements

All stakeholders need to be considered in implementing a compliance management system. This includes not only accountability, responsibility and all lines of reporting, but also front-line and support staff who often implement the compliance practices.

3)   Determine program scope

Consider how far your organisation wishes your compliance management program to extend to. For the compliance management program to be practical, its boundaries must be clearly defined with legislative context included.

4)   Establish governance principles and compliance policy

Consider what kinds of supportive and complementary processes will need to be developed along with the compliance management system to ensure its integrity, success and sustainability. The policy should then be created, stored and communicated in a way that allows your entire organisation and interested third parties to access and understand it.

5)   Identify obligations and risks

Document all of your organisation’s commitments and requirements, and the accompanying risks for each one. This is your organisation’s risk profile.

6)   Develop a plan to meet obligations and address risks

Having created a detailed compliance profile, and considered all of your associated risks, institute an ongoing practice of monitoring for updates that affect your compliance profile and make adjustments in the compliance management system accordingly.

7)   Establish accountabilities and responsibilities

A compliance management program should have direct oversight and clear lines of reporting and accountability. In a small organisation, there may not be entire roles dedicated full-time to compliance management, but the functions must still be assigned to specific roles.

8)   Implement compliance management system

The operational processes, controls and procedures should be documented and communicated to staff in a carefully thought-out approach that treats all staff as stakeholders who must understand and own their responsibilities.

9)   Evaluate program performance and compliance reporting

Decide on metrics of interest, along with tracking and reporting practices that including best practices for data collection and analysis.

10) Manage non-compliance and continuous improvement

There should be multiple avenues for risk reporting and a process for collecting this information and making improvement.

iPRO offers an intelligent, transparent, real-time solution for compliance monitoring, verification and risk management. iPRO assists organisations in defining best practices for contractor management and identifying gaps in their current risk management.

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