Breaking Compliance News Blog

The U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, publishes a guidance document: Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs (ECCP). The DOJ has updated the guidance multiple times, most recently in March 2023.

This guidance is used in two ways:

• Federal prosecutors conducting criminal fraud or misconduct investigations (including healthcare fraud) use it to evaluate the effectiveness of a corporation’s compliance program. An effective program has the potential to reduce financial penalties imposed.
• Corporations, including healthcare providers, use the ECCP as a resource when implementing or evaluating the effectiveness of their compliance programs.

The DOJ guidance focuses on three questions:

1. Is the corporation’s compliance program well designed?
2. Is the program being applied earnestly and in good faith? (Is the program adequately resourced and empowered to function effectively?)
3. Does the corporation’s compliance program work in practice?

June ECCP 2020 Updates

In June 2020, the DOJ updated the ECCP; a summary of updates follows.

This blog was also posted on The Compliance & Ethics Blog, the national compliance blog published by the Health Care Compliance Association and the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics.

Jane Goodall is a British primatologist and anthropologist who is world renowned for her study of chimpanzees, and her commitment to conservation and animal welfare.

And, my kids are obsessed with her. They have picture books about her, t-shirts and jigsaw puzzles with her face on them. I’ve learned a lot about Jane Goodall this past year. It is because of my daughters’ heroine that I can share with you this quote from their dear Jane:

“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.”

This insight is from Goodall’s book: With Love: Ten Heartwarming Stories of Chimpanzees in the Wild. It also appears on the website for Roots and Shoots, Goodall’s not-for-profit designed to help youth make a difference in their communities. So, when Goodall says “every individual has a role to play”, she is talking about chimpanzees – but she’s also talking about people (very much so).

After many months working at home in some degree of isolation due to the pandemic, this quote struck a chord with me. Disconnected from the usual flow of teamwork, meetings and conferences, the daily routine at home started with me, my to-do list, and the same question: What will I accomplish at home today?

Do you see how that question is all about me?

November 7-13, 2021 is the Health Care Compliance Association's national Corporate Compliance & Ethics Week.

Healthcare providers around the country will be celebrating Compliance Week.

It's certainly not mandatory to hold a Compliance Week the first week of November - you can have one any time that works for you. Some providers schedule Compliance Week at the same time as annual compliance training. Other providers hold Compliance Week six months after compliance training, to provide a second compliance "blast" during the year. Whatever time you choose, get a Compliance Week on the calendar every year.

If you took a break from Compliance Week during the pandemic, consider planning one during the next six months to boost your compliance culture.

To help you celebrate, MPA is hosting a raffle for everything you need to plan a successful compliance week! Click here to enter to win:

• A set of MPA's Compliance Flashcards
• A 12-month subscription to MPA's Monthly Compliance Newsletter (digital)
• MPA's Compliance Cartoon Caption Contest (digital)
• MPA's HIPAA Compliance Cartoon Caption Contest (digital)
• MPA's Compliance Week Handbook (digital)
• MPA's Monthly Compliance Moments (digital)
• MPA's Monthly HIPAA Moments (digital)

Why Compliance Week?

There are so many reasons why Compliance Week is good for your organization! Compliance Week will...

• Boost your culture of compliance
• Promote the visibility of your compliance program
• Increaseemployees’ familiarity with the Compliance Officer & Committee
• Provide compliance education
• Inspire employees to recognize non-compliance and report it internally
• Show employees that your compliance program is here to help them do their jobs better
• Show employees that your organization and leaders are serious about doing the right thing
• Reinforce compliance principles and keep compliance top of mind
• Reward compliance successes

Short on ideas? MPA can help

This blog was also posted on The Compliance & Ethics Blog, the national compliance blog published by the Health Care Compliance Association and the Society of Corporate Compliance & Ethics.

A few weeks ago, a storm came through the St. Louis area. Wind gusts that reached 41 miles per hour snapped telephone poles in half, toppled trees onto power lines and transformers, and left more than 100,000 people without power. We ended up throwing out everything in our fridge. And then everything in the freezer. And then the fridge itself, which did not survive the power surge.

Despite the widespread damage and outages, our power was restored in 48 hours – pretty quickly compared to prior outages. In 2006, a storm left 1.1 million people without power. The outage took a week to fix, and the extreme heat brought 300 Missouri National Guard troops to St. Louis to help with the effort. Several years later, a winter storm left many without power during bitter cold for a week.

And then something changed.

Cities and power companies began a widespread effort to trim trees whose branches loomed over the power lines. Everywhere I turned, I saw tree trimmers hard at work. Years later, I still see this work being done regularly.

Storms still come, and the power still goes out. But it comes back on much sooner! Is it because of the maintenance to lessen storm damage to power lines? Have the storms been less severe? Or is it a combination of both?

Regardless, everyone sleeps a little better during a storm knowing that everything possible has been done to mitigate the damage and keep power systems running. The proactive response to our region’s severe power failures has made these outages far less disruptive.

What is true for bad weather is true for compliance: things will go wrong – and your routine compliance maintenance can minimize the disruption:

Time and time again, we see healthcare providers defending a HIPAA breach, employee termination, or other compliance conundrum with the words: "All employees are trained at hire and annually."

These articles show us that training staff at hire and annually is not enough.

If we want compliance and HIPAA to be top-of-mind and part of our daily culture, our compliance and HIPAA messages need to be - well, part of our daily culture.

MPA's Monthly Compliance Moments and Monthly HIPAA Moments help you keep these topics top-of-mind for your staff. Each download includes 12 flyers for you to distribute to staff by email, or to print and post around your building. 

Make compliance and HIPAA messages pervasive and effective with MPA's Monthly Compliance Moments and Monthly HIPAA Moments.

Purchase Monthly Compliance Moments for $125.

Purchase Monthly HIPAA Moments for $125.

Boost your culture of compliance with MPA's Compliance Cartoon Caption Contest!

This new download on MPA's store includes four compliance cartoons ready for your employees to caption. The HIPAA version includes four HIPAA cartoons.

Distribute one (or more!) cartoons to your staff by email, or print and post them in your building. Ask staff to come up with captions, and return their cartoons to the Compliance Officer. Then, choose a winner: A caption that embodies your culture of compliance, and will resonate with your organization. Post the winning caption (or captions), and award the winner(s) a prize. 

Consider:

• holding the contest in connection with Compliance Week, or annual compliance training.
• framing your top captions and displaying them in a hallway or common area.

Each caption is followed by Compliance Officer notes: An explanation of the compliance risk involved, and a sample caption.

Compliance Cartoon Caption Game: $95

Compliance Cartoon Caption Game - HIPAA Version: $95

Here's a sample:

One year after COVID-19 hit the United States, we are in varying stages of re-opening - and for many, remote work continues as the new normal.  This changing reality of where we are working brought this popular blog from 2019 to mind - so here is one from the archives...

The other day I stopped by my favorite local coffee shop for an afternoon pick-me-up. I ordered my guilty pleasure – a brown sugar rosemary latte – and sat down in the only available seat on the lobby couch to wait.

A few minutes later, a young woman came in and sat down next to me, opened her laptop, and began clack-clacking away (a common occurrence, as this coffee place is known as an unofficial co-working space).

I got up to get my latte, sat back down, and noticed that the woman was on the phone. I began reading an article about a recent HIPAA breach (in a moment you will learn the irony in this), and tried not to be distracted by her call. But, I couldn’t help but notice she seemed to be talking about a patient. She mentioned the patient’s name and birthday, and then scheduled an appointment for him. She went on to do this for several other patients. Then she called a few patients to check on their condition and well-being. I also couldn’t help but notice that she was typing information into some kind of EMR database.

If this was a cartoon, my head would have exploded at this moment.

The pandemic has led covered entities and business associates to rethink training.

For starters, in-services are not always practical right now. With more remote employees, and concerns about trying to contain spread of the virus, in-person, classroom-style training is not working for everyone.

Plus, many providers are dealing with an evolving workforce: more agency/temp staff, more healthcare professionals newly hired due to loosened education or certification requirements during COVID-19. All of these people need training - and providers have less time to train.

Compliance and HIPAA training does not have to be in the form of a live in-service to be effective. 

MPA's Compliance and HIPAA Training Handbooks can help.

Boost your culture of compliance with MPA's Compliance Cartoon Caption Contest!

This new download on MPA's store includes four compliance cartoons ready for your employees to caption. The HIPAA version includes four HIPAA cartoons.

Distribute one (or more!) cartoons to your staff by email, or print and post them in your building. Ask staff to come up with captions, and return their cartoons to the Compliance Officer. Then, choose a winner: A caption that embodies your culture of compliance, and will resonate with your organization. Post the winning caption (or captions), and award the winner(s) a prize. 

Consider:

• holding the contest in connection with Compliance Week, or annual compliance training.
• framing your top captions and displaying them in a hallway or common area.

Each caption is followed by Compliance Officer notes: An explanation of the compliance risk involved, and a sample caption.

Compliance Cartoon Caption Game: $95

Compliance Cartoon Caption Game - HIPAA Version: $95

Here's a sample: