HQAA Blog

Compliance Programs

Posted by Steve DeGenaro on Wed, Oct 05, 2022 @ 10:44 AM

In our January 2022 blog, we talked about fraud, waste, and abuse and touched on compliance programs. The article prompted questions and comments from quite a few organizations and questions of late suggest it might be a good time to do a deeper dive on compliance programs.

Compliance “programs” are sets of policies & procedures specifically designed to help an organization adhere to law and regulation. These policies and procedures are specifically set up to detect, prevent, and correct fraud, waste, and abuse. Medicare requires any provider to have such a program and they have very specific content they want these policies to contain.

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Topics: Security, Billing, HQAA Accreditation, Compliance, Avoiding Deficiencies, Complaint Process, Business Practices, Marketing, Surveys, OIG

Customer Complaints Can Be a ‘Good Thing’

Posted by Steve DeGenaro on Wed, Nov 13, 2019 @ 08:32 AM

Nobody wants to have a customer complain about any aspect of their business.  Complaints are negative feedback, indicative of an unhappy customer, and generally a bad thing.  They can be harsh or mild, constructive or destructive, fair or unfair, deserved or not deserved.  But at the core of any customer complaint, there is feedback about a customer experience, or at least their perception of that experience.  And this information and feedback can be a treasure trove of information to use to improve the customer experience, your internal processes, and how your organization does business. 

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Topics: Employee Training, Quality Improvement, HME Accreditation Requirements, Process Improvement, Complaint Process, Customer Service, Business Practices

DME Policy Manuals

Posted by Steve DeGenaro on Thu, Nov 08, 2018 @ 10:28 AM

Many in the home medical equipment industry equate policy manuals to their accreditation inspections. And of course, these bulky tomes are certainly a large part of the accreditation and survey experience for every DME. Policy manuals serve as the road map for how work gets done within an organization, a set of rules for the organization, and the document that defines the structure, function, and philosophy of the organization. Let’s look at what a policy manual should contain and how it impacts not only accreditation, but also the overall day-to-day operation of an organization.

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Topics: Employee Training, HIPAA, Security, Personnel Files, Quality Improvement, Billing, Renewing Accreditation, Quality Standards, HQAA Accreditation, HME Accreditation Requirements, Patient File Requirements, Compliance, Patient Privacy, Clinical Practice Guidelines, Materials Management, Avoiding Deficiencies, CMS, Complaint Process, Quality Care, Showroom, Retail, Delivery, Clinical Respiratory Services, Oxygen, Warehouse, Safety Officer, Competence, Customer Service, Disaster Preparedness, Emergencies, Business Practices, Marketing

Creating a Thorough HME Complaint Process

Posted by Jim Moyer on Thu, Nov 15, 2012 @ 09:02 AM

In order to determine if a grievance or complaint needs to be recorded, you must first decide what is, and what is not, a complaint. Your team must determine the threshold that it takes for a concern or question to truly be a complaint/grievance. Not every concern expressed may be a complaint. Let’s look at two examples:

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Topics: HME Accreditation Requirements, Avoiding Deficiencies, Complaint Process

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