As a licensed healthcare professional, regulatory compliance defense is just part of your job. That said, things are complicated when you consider the ever-evolving network of administrative statutes, rules, and other regulations that can sometimes even seem to conflict with each other. It is confusing and may even lead to inadvertently violating the law.
The team of experienced defense attorneys over at the Norman Spencer Law Group share your concerns. We understand that compliance is imperative for maintaining a successful practice. That’s why we work closely with licensed healthcare professionals to help ensure compliance with every single transaction that they make.
We have helped many clients identify and correct compliance issues before allegations of non-compliance could even occur. We’ve successfully defended clients facing allegations of non-compliance. Our goal is always to protect your right to continue practicing medicine in your field.
Complexities of Healthcare Compliance
Regulatory compliance is extremely complicated. Sometimes it takes more than one attorney to help you with it. Oftentimes, it takes a team effort. Our team of experts will help with reviewing your compliance as well as defending you against allegations of non-compliance. Hospitals and larger organizations may have compliance officers. However, most individual healthcare providers need to rely on themselves to ensure the entire compliance. We are here to help.
Even hospitals and much larger healthcare facilities can find regulatory compliance to be particularly challenging. It’s, even more, intimidating for smaller providers and practitioners out there. Ensuring compliance takes up a large number of resources, time, and effort.
If you visit the website for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) you’ll immediately see why. The website even states that it contains about 37,000 procedure and guidance documents. These total more than 7 million pages altogether. The sheer number of documents and pages alone makes it look like CMS and the Health and Human Services are in the sole business of writing regulations. Our business over at the Norman Spencer Law Group is to help ensure that your practice adheres to them.
Adhering to Regulatory Compliance Defense
All healthcare practitioners that bill Medicare and Medicaid must comply with all applicable regulations. With that said, the requirements don’t stop there. Healthcare professionals are also beholden to the regulations of their states. Don’t forget about private health insurance companies.
There are state safety regulations, OSHA regulations, state board regulations. There are the labor department rules, the DEA regulations, and rules and regulations from other entities that are simply too numerous to list here. All it takes is one violation of one rule to cause an investigation to be brought up against you.
Providing Regulatory Compliance Defense
CMS does try to provide healthcare professionals with the details of each rule that they might have broken through a variety of channels. CMS offers small entity compliance guides as well as the Medicare Learning Network. Small entity compliance guides explain the specific actions that you would have to take in order to be in compliance. However, they are not necessarily straightforward to follow in every case.
MLN’s purpose is to provide education on compliance information for any and all Medicare providers who work under the fee-for-service structure. Here you’ll find a range of training and educational materials that will try to simplify Medicare policy by presenting it in plain language with actionable tips.
The MLN also tries to deliver a coordinated healthcare provider education program. You can access this information through national educational articles, web-based videos, and other types of training courses, fact sheets, brochures, and many other channels. The program can help your overall level of comprehension to some degree. However, simply going through the MLN materials takes a lot of time and effort that not every healthcare provider has.
How Our Regulatory Compliance Lawyers Can Help
The compliance defense lawyers at the Norman Spencer Law Group are here to help you wade through and figure out the plethora of compliance rules and regulations so that we can help ensure you’re meeting all of them. With years of serious experience in the legal healthcare field, we’ve helped countless healthcare professionals during all stages of the compliance process. Our team has experts from various healthcare disciplines and compliance fields. We can help you no matter where you are.
We’ve helped them establish and maintain an internal compliance program for their specific practice that will then significantly reduce the risk of audits and investigations due to non-compliance allegations. We’ve also represented and defended other clients that have already been accused of violating various rules and regulations.
If your practice could use a strong and effective compliance program, or if you’re in need of an experienced defense attorney to handle your case, our lawyers are ready to help. Call the offices of the Norman Spencer Law Group to schedule a consultation today.