Guidebook Review

This review was performed in 1999-2000. Since then the publication has been renamed to the Healthcare Organization and Medical Office Compliance Program Guide. The revised book contains detailed information regarding compliance policies and materials applicable to the majority of healthcare organizations, not just medical offices. The current price is $377. The book is now over 850 pages in length. One year of quarterly updates are included in the purchase price and additional years can be purchased by subscription.

Review of HCR's Medical Office Compliance Program Guide
The following review of HCR's Compliance Guidebook was completed by the following officers for an article published in The Journal of Healthcare Compliance.
 
David B. Orbuch
Compliance Officer
Allina Health System
 
Steve Lokensgard
Associate General Counsel
Allina Health System
 
Compliance Bible: Finding a Handbook That Will Assist You in Times of Need
 
As compliance professionals, we are frequently faced with questions that we cannot and perhaps should not answer off the tops of our heads. In these situations we typically consult our compliance bibles to help us in our quest for knowledge. Many of us use similar compliance bibles; the purpose of this article is to review four of the more popular versions and to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.
 
We used a number of different evaluation criteria in making our assessment:

• breadth of compliance issues addressed
• focus on key compliance issues such as billing matters and internal investigation procedures
• usefulness for compliance counsel versus compliance officer
• OSHA and CLIA Compliance - current regulations and practice assessments.
• helpfulness for compliance novice versus the experienced compliance professional
• price
• sample forms and policies
• ease of locating issues and the ability to update the manual

HCR's Medical Office Compliance Program Guide
 
This well-organized guide is geared for the clinic manager of a physician medical practice who has just been tasked with the responsibility of creating and implementing a comprehensive compliance program. It will not be as useful for the full-time compliance professional in a large health system or counsel whose primary focus is with compliance issues. This guide is really a step-by-step aid to help the clinic manager create a comprehensive compliance manual for the physician medical practice. The guide starts off with a short summary of the basics: What are the benefits of a compliance program for a physician medical practice? It then helps you write an OSHA and CLIA. In each section the guide walks the manager through the necessary substantive elements for the compliance manual. For example, under billing and reimbursement, the guide asks the reader if the practice has a written policy that relates to medical record documentation or for billing services rendered by non-physician practitioners. If not, the guide provides sample language for such policies. Areas that need to be filled in by the manager are preceded by questions that must be answered by the specific practice. At the end of this manual are five appendixes that provide more detail on the substantive issues as well as staff training materials. Again, this is a great guide for someone who does not specialize in compliance. Those of us who deal with this every day will find these materials too general.
 
Rating: **** four out of five stars
 
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