How to Help Your Vendors be Good Compliance Partners

By Lisa Larson-Bunnell, JD, MHA, CPHRM, CHC

Healthcare compliance can be very complicated.  Although I do everything I can to highlight the necessity and accomplishments of our profession and its professionals, none of us can do it on our own.  This is particularly true when a new regulation requires several departments and systems to work together in order to achieve compliance.

The best leaders work hard to build a culture within their organization that values compliance.  When they are successful, they are able to pull together divergent groups to work towards a shared goal.  However, even these teams will falter when the outside companies they rely on to support their business functions do not share the same goal.

Recent experiences have reminded me that the companies we contract with and the health care providers they serve have different goals.  Even processes that are fundamental to a provider’s livelihood may be supported by a company who a) does not have the internal leadership necessary to identify regulatory changes in a timely manner, b) is not staffed appropriately to respond to regulatory changes or, c) frankly does not care.  Thankfully, I have not encountered many health care contractors who just don’t give a darn.  But, the other two categories can be just as vexing.

So, what can you do when you are faced with a partner who cannot meet your compliance needs?

The best thing you can do is to be an advocate for your organization.  This means you need to keep your finger on the pulse of regulatory changes, and work with people within your organization to understand the potential impact.  Once you have that understanding, you should reach out to the vendors you have not heard from about the necessary changes.  At this point, you will either receive a progress update from the vendor, or you will educate them about the new requirement.  Either way, this is the time to set the expectation of compliance, and solicit deadlines for their completion of work.

If you are faced with a vendor who is not making progress towards regulatory compliance, it’s time to escalate.  First, you must escalate within your own organization.  Make sure your internal business owners, including the c-suite as necessary, are aware of the issue.  Many times, they are the best liaisons to the company.  Depending on the regulation, you may also want to reach out to the company’s compliance officer.  Many companies do not have compliance officers, so this will not work in all cases.  But, if you can show that failure to make the necessary changes will put their company at risk along with yours, it’s worth a shot.

Another option is to include strong compliance language in your purchase and services agreements.   Specifically, you can have language that says you can get out of a contract if the vendor fails to comply with future regulatory changes.  Even better, you may want to try to include penalties for not meeting compliance objectives.  Realistically, most companies with a decent contract attorney will not agree to these terms.  Also, quickly cutting ties may not be a feasible option for your organization.  However, the contract negotiation process will give you the opportunity to set the expectation of compliance, and to get assurances from the company (even through e-mail exchanges) that they are committed to compliance and to working with their customers to meet their regulatory needs.

These are just some of the tools you can use to push your vendors towards compliance.  Overall, communication is crucial. The more you keep the lines of communication open with your external partners, the more successful you will be in achieving your compliance goals.

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Lisa is the Associate General Counsel and Compliance Director at a 450 bed acute care facility and multispecialty provider network in the Kansas City area.