Tricks to Master Incident Management with Software

As we discussed in our previous incident management posts, your compliance program doesn’t need to be perfect, but rather, it needs to be “generally effective” in preventing non-compliance. Your effectiveness will be determined by how well your program manages and documents the numerous incidents your compliance program. And, again, failing to prevent the occasional incident does not mean your compliance program is ineffective or that you’re a huge failure. Rather, ineffectiveness is determined by how you manage those incidents once they’re reported.

Much of managing incidents comes down to documentation. Afterall, even if you go through all of the four stages of incident management:

• Discovery: The discovery of events and issues can come from a number of sources, incident report, risk management referral, complaints, citations, etc.
• Investigation: When conducting an investigation you’ll generally want to conduct interviews. Before jumping in, gather as many facts as possible and try to become an expert before interview. Review relevant documents, and if possibly, seek outside counsel, auditors, or other healthcare experts.
• Corrective Action: Determine the root causes of each potential violation, then, design and implement changes to eliminate the root causes. The OIG stated that “detected but uncorrected misconduct can seriously endanger” your organization’s “mission, reputation, and legal status.”
• Documentation: Providers should maintain records that accurately and fully document their investigation efforts to demonstrate that they acted in a diligent and timely manner. Documentation should be easy to locate even years down the road.

What does it matter if all of those steps are not properly documented and easy to prove years later? Paper, filing cabinets, and overflowing boxes have been the traditional method, however, there are better, more effective ways to do it.

Software is magic. In fact, we know a few tricks using software that will allow you to manage incidents effectively from start to finish, increase your productivity, and give you the opportunity to access any of your documentation years after the fact, at the touch of a button.

Should your compliance come into question, would you rather head to a storage room and spend countless hours going through boxes full of paper all while hoping you still have everything so your organization isn’t nailed for non-compliance, or, hit a button to access mountains of evidence that you’ve done your job and you’ve done it well?

Join this free webinar, 4 Incident Management Tricks That Will Make You More Productive, to get new hacks and ideas on how you can be more productive while managing, and documenting every reported incident in the most effective way possible.