HIPAA -The Acronym What does HIPAA stand for? Some people would say, Helping Increase Paperwork Across America, given all the paperwork involved, but actually, it stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). It was developed a quarter of a century ago and enacted in the early 2000’s. The intent of the rule…

Marketing- Optional yet Beneficial Marketing is not a required component of setting up a clinic. It is good business though, to try to attract like-minded patients by marketing and sharing information about your practice. There are a variety of ways to approach the task of marketing. Keeping your patients is one side of marketing that…

Your OIG Compliance Program You’ve heard about OIG Compliance for years, and you may even recognize the need to implement it in your practice. But do you know what it looks like and what it is comprised of? Here we outline the most important factors of OIG Compliance and describe how to scale a program…

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Since its 1976 establishment, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has been at the forefront of the Nation’s efforts to fight waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, and more than 100 other HHS programs. In 2000, the OIG published…

Clinic Size Does Not Dictate the Need  As compliance specialists, we hear it often, “it is just me” or “we are a small clinic”. This is not an excuse for not implementing policies in the clinic. Whether it is compliance training, coding and documentation procedures, or other critical areas of a practice, policy and procedure…

Does our Clinic Need a Compliance Officer? The answer is, yes! Whether you are a single provider, small office, or large facility, an assigned compliance officer is a required component of both OIG and HIPAA Compliance. The role or job duties may vary according to the size of the practice. For example, in some clinics,…