Accreditation/Compliance: Know these seven elements

Q. I am new to DME compliance. Where should I get started?

A. The first place you should start is to make sure your company follows the federally mandated Seven Element Compliance Plan.

1. Implement written policies, procedures and standards of conduct. Most likely your company has effective policies and procedures in place, along with clearly stated standards of conduct in your employee handbook. Review them all to ensure that they are clear and concise.

2. Designate a compliance officer (most likely it would be you) and a compliance committee. Review who is on your compliance committee, how often it meets and that all meetings are documented.

3. Conduct effective training and education. Review how new employees are trained regarding compliance upon hire and then the annual training on compliance issues your company requires.

4.Develop effective lines of communication. Ensure that you, as the compliance officer, have a direct line of communication to your owners or board of directors, that you don’t have to first “run anything through” other executive team members.

5. Conduct internal monitoring and auditing. Your office responds to external audits (audits coming from payers), but do you have an effective internal audit program? How many records are audited per week/month of the products you provide to find problems or concerns that you can identify and remediate before that problem goes any further.

6. Enforce standards of conduct through well publicized and disciplinary guidelines.

 7. Respond promptly to detected offenses and implement corrective actions. Ensure that your employee handbook clearly defines that you are a compliant company, expect compliance from all staff, and be clear about the consequences of committing an infraction and the ways that you offer staff to report potential issues. This will provide you with a complete picture of the company and where you might find issues that may need attention.

Mary Ellen Conway is a nurse-health care consultant and president of Capital Healthcare Group. She can be reached at maryellen@capitalhealthcaregroup.com.