Betsy Wade (bwade@signaturehealthcarellc.com) is the Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer at Signature HealthCARE in Louisville, KY.
A major focus area for compliance departments is managing, preventing, and mitigating risk. With the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on healthcare’s regulatory environment, compliance officers have even more to evaluate during their next risk assessment cycle.
Risk assessments are foundational to a compliance program and are essential to ensuring the program is effective. Conducting a risk assessment should not be new for compliance departments given that the reviews have their roots in the federal Sentencing Guidelines, Office of Inspector General (OIG) compliance guidance, recent corporate integrity agreements, and compliance effectiveness guidance that the U.S. Department of Justice and OIG, in conjunction with HCCA, have issued the last several years.[1]