Compliance and Data - The Emerging Alliance

Compliance and Data - The Emerging Alliance

Last year I mentioned a few times the importance of having compliance involved in data collection and analysis. At the HCCA regional conference in Boston this month this came up as a topic several times. In order to provide evidence of compliance for various state and federal programs you need to provide data evidence.  How would a compliance officer be able to verify with impartiality that the information is correct?  The term data quality compliance analyst came up and I think its worth looking at. Most compliance folks have a clinical or legal background(my background is technical so I must be the extreme minority) and a database is a complete mystery to them.  Frankly I would look  at anything IT gives you with extreme prejudice. IT doesn't look at things from a compliance standpoint and usually regards most regulatory concerns as a burden and not a requirement. Most Health IT organizations have Data Analysts and these skills do bleed over a bit.  However they report to IT and this may be a conflict of interest. You are starting to see the establishment of Data Quality Teams and Data Governance. I would highly suggest talking about establishing these teams or getting involved with them.  You need to talk to your CIO on this.  You will be surprised he probably knows more than you think about this.  IT information security it usually part of the CIO's office and they are getting hit constantly with HIPAA regulations. Talking data compliance and review may spark some serious cross organizational discussions.