The Top 3 Challenges With Managing Regulatory Compliance

Managing regulatory compliance is one area of healthcare where the majority prefer digital solutions over manual processes. While doing things by hand or with a traditional spreadsheet can seem like the easy route, with compliance protocol management already scaling on the higher end of complexity, it’s simply become too risky to default to this.

When considering how you approach managing regulatory compliance, consider 3 of the main drivers that push compliance officers to seek digital frameworks first over anything else.

1. Regulatory Change Increases Have Become Too Rapid

There are just under 630 regulatory requirements that different health systems, providers, and hospitals have to follow. Those requirements span nine domains, and the pace of regulatory changes has been shifting more rapidly since 2010 when the most recent major healthcare reform took place.

Regulatory changes occur as they are needed, and these changes are often accompanied by routine surveys, and a lot of the time, additional costs. For example, it costs close to $39 billion annually on non-clinical regulatory requirements alone. Compliance officers are realizing they just can’t keep up with the continuously shifting industry changes and the costs that come with those shifts. So, what would be the most proactive fix for the challenge of not being able to keep up?

To combat falling victim to potential noncompliance penalties and associated fees, more compliance officers are prioritizing the use of a streamlined regulatory management framework. This type of solution helps with adaptation to regulatory changes by offering compliance professionals a centralized location for compliance tools and documentation, an effective way to mitigate risks, and a way out of the traditional spreadsheet approach.

2. Difficulty Managing 3rd Party Applications

Whether you need to incorporate third-party technology to provide your team with documentation importing, data analysis support, or team sharing, third-party monitoring is essential in preventing misuse of your client’s data. Third-party compliance is a separate need, which means that your compliance department has to be aware of it.

Third-party breaches can cost millions of dollars, and because of that, the best way to approach this type of challenge is to avoid the need for too many third-party applications in your compliance workflow. To do this, prioritize using a regulatory compliance framework that is not just digital but built around automation and hosts a variety of robust tools within one centralized suite.

3. Inability To See Through Reporting Gaps

One of the biggest challenges for many compliance departments is achieving streamlined reporting. Compliance tracking has multiple limitations, especially if you are still using more classic options like spreadsheets. Aggregating employee data presents difficulty. There is often little to no real-time visibility for your data and even limited capability of visualizing the end result of your compliance tracking.

The solution is to prioritize a system that prioritizes your data and condenses your current workflows into one streamlined process. This will almost virtually eliminate gaps in your reporting efforts, which can help decrease the chances of noncompliance.

Eliminating Unneeded Complications From Compliance

There is too much risk involved with taking the chance to keep spreadsheets as a part of your compliance workflow. Healthcare organizations often struggle with managing regulatory compliance because they often have unclear policy standards, less efficient means for compliance tracking, and a regulatory compliance management framework that isn’t digital-first. Instead of falling into the challenge of administrative downfall, prioritize the adoption of compliance software built to reduce risk, turn your data into usable insights, and deduct the time you usually spend on compliance tracking and reporting.