Introduction: The Importance of the Compliance Officer to the Company
- Many industries operate under different regulatory requirements.
- Examples are pharmaceuticals, financial securities, and insurance.
- Not complying with standards is a risk of facing sanctions and further closure.
- Companies need a compliance officer.
- The purpose is to ensure compliance with established industry standards and guarantee internal controls are in place (Herrin, 2021).
- Employees are responsible for themselves, the company, and patients.
- Staff compliance controls in health care facilities are essential.
The Need to Wash Hands Between Clients:Basics
- Hand hygiene of medical personnel is a serious problem that is still relevant today.
- Up to 80% of HCAI are transmitted through the hands of healthcare workers (World Health Organization, 2021).
- Regular hygiene is a way to improve client safety.
- Sanitation compliance and monitoring are essential to this issue.
High-Level Responsibility
- Cleanliness – a guarantor of safe health care for the client.
- Hand hygiene is, on the one hand, a simple action. On the other hand, a problem worldwide among health care professionals (Ahmed et al., 2020).
- It is especially crucial given the situation with COVID-19 (Ng & Or, 2020).
- Responsibility activities as a way to sensitize employees to the problem.
- Liability: personal, administrative, legal, or other.
- The type of liability depends on the extent of the damage.
- Information should be spelled out in the organization’s internal regulatory documents and the personal contract.
- This type of policy raises awareness and will ensure respectful treatment.
Monitoring and Auditing: Basics
- Hand hygiene is a fundamental infection control activity.
- Non-compliance affects a company’s reputation, customer loyalty, and attitude toward the facility.
- Monitoring this process is a fundamental element in the compliance plan (Shobowale et al., 2016).
- The method includes several points: monitoring the use of funds, direct control of the employees themselves, and a survey of patients.
Monitoring and Auditing: Key Aspects
- Monitoring the use of hygiene products – gives an objective assessment of how and in what quantities employees use them.
- Patient survey – allows to learn about compliance measures directly from those concerned and provide information immediately after the procedure.
- Employee monitoring – gives a clear view of the situation from an independent person, for example, an auditor (Gould et al., 2017).
- Adherence to all these points will increase compliance and instill discipline in employees.
Plan: Providing Knowledge of Fire Extinguisher Use
- Holding a fire extinguisher is an obligation for any company, especially in medical facilities.
- Everyone must know how a fire extinguisher is designed, operates, and how to handle it (Lovreglio et al., 2021).
- A compliance plan is fundamental for employees who work in the service area.
- Having a plan ensures the safety of staff and patients and the protection of company property.
Key Plan Policies
- Responsibility increases employee awareness of potential threats.
- Communication ensures that information is communicated promptly between all structures.
- Monitoring helps identify gaps and develop new strategies for the future.
- Response enables to take control of the situation and take necessary action.
- Discipline keeps these strategies at the appropriate level.
- Education promotes an adequate knowledge background.
- Compliance Standards provide a benchmark of requirements that employees adhere to.
Education: Fundamental Aspects
- A fire extinguisher can put out a small flame or keep it from spreading until competent services arrive.
- Knowledge gives the confidence to act in critical situations.
- It is crucial to conduct scheduled seminars to learn about this topic.
- Training should include both theoretical aspects and practical exercises (Dababneh & Ajlouni, 2017).
Education: Key Elements
- Group lectures describing the subject matter itself, its types, and applications.
- Distribute the material with relevant information on paper or send via corporate email.
- At the end of the lectures, administer a test in both online and written format.
- Post the basic rules in the public domain, for example, on a stand in the break room.
- Practical training where employees will try to use a fire extinguisher on their own.
- This policy will ensure fundamental knowledge and basic skills.
Compliance Standards: Fundamentals and Key Elements
- Healthcare standards protect both employees and patients.
- Ensure that equipment, laboratory procedures, and examinations are reliable and that information is safe.
- Compliance standards should specify how to use a fire extinguisher and that every employee should be familiar with these rules.
- Having standards in place and being familiar with them promptly will increase competence in this area.
- It is necessary to monitor how serious employees are about learning the information.
- Compliance with this policy helps to create an organizational culture that emphasizes responsible behavior (Bodenger & Steiner, 2017).
- Compliance standards are practical tools that can make people’s daily lives safer and healthier.
Conclusion
Compliance in health care is essential for health care providers to operate and implement policies smoothly and within the law. Developing an effective compliance program is fundamental to protecting any organization involved in the healthcare industry. A successful compliance program addresses mutual goals for both employees and the company as a whole.
Compliance plans help healthcare organizations fulfill their legal obligation to avoid setting unnecessary goals and making false claims. Competent and timely application of policies will help maintain the effectiveness of the compliance plan. Achieving all of these goals benefits the healthcare industry, the government, and patients alike.
References
Ahmed, J., Malik, F., Memon, Z. A., Arif, T. B., Ali, A., Nasim, S., Ahmad, J., & Khan, M. A. (2020). Compliance and knowledge of healthcare workers regarding hand hygiene and use of disinfectants: A study based in Karachi. Cureus, 12(2). Web.
Bodenger, G., & Steiner, J. E. (2017). Developing, implementing, and maintaining an effective compliance program. Journal of Health Care Compliance, 19(1), 19-52. Web.
Dababneh, A. J., & Ajlouni, M. M. (2017). Fire extinguisher training: Subjective assessment of a newly developed method by expert and novice firefighters. Jordan Journal of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, 11(3). 155-164. Web.
Debra Cascardo, M. A. (2016). The key elements in developing a comprehensive compliance program. The Journal of Medical Practice Management: MPM, 31(6), 344. Web.
Gould, D. J., Creedon, S., Jeanes, A., Drey, N. S., Chudleigh, J., & Moralejo, D. (2017). Impact of observing hand hygiene in practice and research: A methodological reconsideration. Journal of Hospital Infection, 95(2), 169-174. Web.
Herrin, B. S. (2021). What your compliance office is-and is not. Journal of Health Care Law and Policy, 24(1), 139. Web.
Lovreglio, R., Duan, X., Rahouti, A., Phipps, R., & Nilsson, D. (2021). Comparing the effectiveness of fire extinguisher virtual reality and video training. Virtual Reality, 25, 133-145. Web.
Ng, Y. M., & Or, P. L. P. (2020). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) prevention: Virtual classroom education for hand hygiene. Nurse Education in Practice, 45. Web.
Shobowale, E. O., Adegunle, B., & Onyedibe, K. (2016). An assessment of hand hygiene practices of healthcare workers of a semi-urban teaching hospital using the five moments of hand hygiene. Nigerian Medical Journal: Journal of the Nigeria Medical Association, 57(3), 150. Web.
World Health Organization. (2021). Infection prevention and control. Web.