Bethany Hills, a Member of the Firm in the Health Care and Life Sciences practice, in the New York office, was quoted in an article titled "Your Compliance Is Assured."
Following is an excerpt:
According to Bethany Hills, MPH, the foundation of any compliance program is risk management. ?...
Since 2009, any health system in New York billing or receiving at least $500,000 in Medicaid has been mandated to establish a compliance program, Hills said, making organizations in that state de facto countrywide leaders in following a federal compliance blueprint.
That doesn't necessarily mean that New York-based healthcare systems are specifically better at managing risk, or that they're even more risk-aware than clients in other areas, she said. In fact, risk management is "some of the most complicated things to ask a client to do," Hills said.
"They aren't exactly sure where to look for the risk or what constitutes risk; how you define it," she said. "So often there's a very strong interrelationship between risk management on the financial side and risk management on the quality assurance side; a patient safety, injury, and adverse-events approach.
"Then there's the legal and the client risk," Hills said. "Sometimes there are risks that may not have much of a financial impact, may not impact patient safety, but may violate the law. That's where I see putting together a team to do a risk assessment."