ASHRM leaders: It’s a risk management duty
Corporate compliance is posing a challenge to risk managers because it is not at all clear how they should be involved, say two leaders in the American Society for Healthcare Risk Management. Grena Porto, RN, MS, DASHRM, director of risk management and loss prevention insurance services with VHA East in Berwyn, PA, is president-elect of ASHRM, and Jeannie Sedwick, ARM, managing director for property and casualty with the American Hospital Association’s AHA Insurance Resource in Chicago, is a past president of ASHRM. They tell HRM that corporate compliance clearly is a risk management function but they stop short of saying risk managers should take on the role of CO.
Ideally, the organization would hire an entirely new person for an entirely new corporate compliance position within the organization, they say. But smaller organizations will find that is too expensive, so the CO position may be handed to the risk manager. Don’t feel too badly if you are in the dark about how to take on corporate compliance duties; Porto and Sedwick say most risk managers are bewildered and waiting for directions.
"A lot of hospitals also are hiring outside accounting firms to come in and set up corporate compliance programs and administer them," Sedwick notes. "Accounting firms are seeing a big opportunity here and are offering their services. That’s not a bad option if your hospital can afford it."
Quality assurance leaders also may get the CO position, but Porto says that is less than ideal because they typically do not have the necessary experience with compliance issues. And she says she is troubled by what she hears about how many facilities are giving the CO position to chief financial officers and legal counsel.
"They clearly are not appropriate because they have inherent conflicts of interest," Porto explains. "The chief financial officer’s job is to ensure the financial success of the organization, so you can’t really do that and do the CO job properly. Legal counsel is obligated to representing the organization as his client, so he or she can’t be aggressive as the CO."
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