Confronting Compliance Challenges for DSOs and Large Group Practices

Compliance
HealthFirst

Compliance has become a top priority for Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) and large group practices, and for good reason. Meeting compliance is a powerful way to demonstrate an organization’s commitment to patient and staff safety, as well as an excellent level of patient care. In striving to meet compliance, DSOs and large group practices face a range of unique challenges and complexities. Addressing those challenges requires a uniform, streamlined approach across all practices and locations. Achieving that uniformity, however, can be a challenge in and of itself.

By now, most DSOs and large group practices are familiar with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and its focus on safe work environments as well as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Established in 1970, OSHA ensures safe and healthful working conditions for employees by setting and enforcing a wide range of workplace safety standards. Both OSHA and HIPAA work diligently to ensure that healthcare facilities, including dental practices, are complying with a series of stringent and continually evolving requirements. Passed in 1996, HIPAA is a federal law that provides baseline protocols for healthcare environments designed to protect the privacy and integrity of patient data.

Why Compliance Matters

In addition to being mandated by law, complying with OSHA and HIPAA requirements helps insulate DSOs and large group practices from liability, hefty penalties, as well as reputational damage. Most importantly, meeting compliance shows to staff and patients alike that the practices within the organization maintain the highest standards of safety and privacy.

For now, let’s focus on the financial risk. Both OSHA and HIPAA regularly send inspectors into practices with the express goal of uncovering every last violation, in every corner of the office. Each violation found comes with a serious financial penalty. Fines extend up to $50,000 per HIPAA violation with repeat violations potentially culminating in up to $1.5 million per year, per violation. In 2022, fines for serious OSHA violations jumped from $13,653 to $14,502 per violation. For DSOs and large group practices operating multiple locations, these per-violation fines can quickly add up, resulting in tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in combined penalties.

Common Compliance Challenges

While the advantages of complying with OSHA and HIPAA are clear, meeting their requirements can be anything but — especially for DSOs and large group practices that must ensure consistent compliance across all their offices, locations, and staff. That level of complexity comes with multiple challenges, including:

Disparate Information

DSOs and large group practices are tasked with understanding and meeting not only federal requirements, but those unique to each state in which their practices are located. In an effort to stay ahead of ever-changing compliance requirements, organizations will often turn to multiple consultants and law firms for guidance — rather than one source for the most current and accurate information that applies to all offices. This can create even more confusion as well as inconsistencies.

Inconsistent Protocols

Different staff at different practices often employ widely varying protocols — what PPE to wear, for example. This inconsistency can open practices up to violations and potential penalties. The lack of accurate training is a key contributor to these variations in protocols across multiple offices. In addition to providing regular, consistent training for staff, practices must also remember to have staff sign off on their training (something inspectors will be on the look-out for as well).

Lack of Knowledge

As a result of improper, incomplete, and inconsistent training, staff often don’t know the OSHA and HIPAA requirements they are mandated to meet. This is especially true when it comes to properly segregating wastes, water and spore testing, who to train and when to train them, how to adequately protect patient information, and the proper documents required at each location that must be made readily available to inspectors.

Managing all these compliance components across multiple offices and staff can be a logistical nightmare for DSOs and large group practices. Having a uniform compliance approach starting at the enterprise level and extending out across all offices will mitigate these complexities, saving DSOs and large group practices significant time, frustration, and money while allowing them to focus on running and growing their organizations.

Implementing a Uniform Compliance Program

Embracing standardized, consistent practices and policies around meeting OSHA and HIPAA compliance requirements not only helps insulate practices from costly fines and reputational damage. It also supports the continued success and growth of DSOs and large group practices by:

Freeing managers and leadership to focus on more critical business initiatives.
Ensuring that staff is knowledgeable, on the same page, and ready to provide inspectors with the most current documentation within minutes.
Empowering staff to be more efficient, productive, and engaged in patient care.
Attracting and retaining quality talent seeking a safe, healthy practice to join.
Improving the patient experience, satisfaction, loyalty, and word of mouth.
Elevating practices and sense of pride with a high level of patient and staff safety.

One Expert Source and One Dashboard

Having one reliable and expert source for compliance information, guidance, and tools will go a long way to helping DSOs and large group practices seamlessly implement their uniform compliance program to support their success. Offered through Health First, leaders in infection control, provide that single source for complete compliance expertise.

Led by a team of dental professionals with real-world clinical experience, HealthFirst Compliance Solutions serves as a trusted advisor and advocate to guide DSOs and large group practices through every step of unifying, implementing, and managing their compliance programs — from employee training to documentation to proper protocols to inspection preparation and ongoing consultation. HealthFirst Compliance Solutions also provides DSOs and large group practices with access to OnTraqTM— a streamlined platform and dashboard that delivers a 360-degree, single-screen view of complete compliance activities and status, across all locations.

Using OnTraq, DSOs and large group practices are empowered to unify their OSHA, HIPAA, and Infection Prevention efforts into one program. OnTraq makes achieving compliance more efficient and painless, with access to the most up-to-date and accurate documentation, training, protocols, and more.

With OnTraq, compliance officers have all the visibility and information they need at their fingertips to ensure the success of their compliance programs. Using OnTraq, compliance officers can quickly see:

Which employees need to be trained and when.
What actions still need to be taken.
Which offices need attention and follow-up conversations.
Which water and spore testing has been done or needs to be done.
Whether waste is being separated properly.

In addition to top-line views of the entire organization, OnTraq allows officers to review practice-level details and site-specific data around compliance activities. Using this insight, they can then develop a plan to ensure every office is aligned with enterprise-level compliance standards for a completely uniform program.

OSHA and HIPAA compliance doesn’t have to be a drain on resources, time, or the bottom line. With the right plan, partner, and platform in place, meeting and maintaining compliance can become a point of pride, a competitive advantage, and another powerful strategy supporting the success of your DSO or large group practice, as well as the offices you support. If you’re a DSO or large group practice looking to unify and streamline your compliance program, reach out to HealthFirst today. We’re here to help.

HealthFirst

We help dental and medical offices across the country maintain readiness and patient safety by providing solutions that cost-effectively manage the complexities around medical emergency preparedness, infection control, medical waste and regulatory compliance.