The Importance of OIG’s Compliance Program Guidance

Years ago, the OIG initiated a strategy to engage the healthcare community to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in the Federal healthcare programs. Through this initiative, the OIG has developed a series of compliance program guidance (CPG) documents, each of them written specifically for various segments of the healthcare industry. Since its launch, they have developed CPG  documents for hospitals, nursing homes, third-party billers, and durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers, in their effort to encourage the development and use of internal controls to monitor adherence to applicable statutes, regulations, and program requirements.

Whether you’re a seasoned compliance veteran, or have just begun your journey, I always recommend that professionals in our field continue to build and reinforce the OIG’s best practices. The benefit, or course, is to help you stay ahead of the curve in our ever-changing profession of choice. In my experience, examining (or reexamining) the basics of compliance can be both rejuvenating and beneficial to professionals of all experience levels.

To that end, the OIG continues to publish and update their compliance guidelines for a variety of organization types. Specifically, for hospitals with existing compliance programs, this document may serve as a benchmark or comparison against which to measure ongoing efforts and as a roadmap for updating or refining their compliance plans.

Because we’re such big fans of continuing education, especially in our shared love in compliance, we want to help you brush up on your OIG-recommended knowledge. Which is why we’re starting a new webinar series, titled “Back to Compliance Basics.” In our upcoming presentation, and the first in our new Back to Basics series I’ll present, “Effective Program Guidance for Hospitals & Health Systems.” During this 60-minute presentation, I’ll be focusing on specific program guidance from OIG documents for services and provider types typically found within health systems, and help you:

• Apply the OIG Compliance Program Guidance to Your Organization
• Understand Coding Risk Areas for Outpatient Services
• Implement an Ongoing Auditing and Monitoring Process

And just for attending the live presentation, we’ll be providing 1.2 Compliance Certification Board-approved credits, for free. I hope to see you there!