Set Specific Compliance Goals for the New Year

A new year is a time for new year’s resolutions. This year, consider setting some compliance goals as the new year’s resolutions for your laboratory. Healthcare attorney David Gee of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP suggests laboratory compliance officers and compliance committees list the “three top things we need to be doing, how we are going to do them, [and] how can we measure our efforts.” Then reevaluate mid-way through the year, in June, to see how the lab is doing in accomplishing those three goals.

He also suggests compliance professionals approach their boards, “impress upon them now more than ever, the importance of having the board and corporate management engaged in compliance” and have monthly or regular meetings to review the goals you set for the year. “This keeps the compliance officer’s efforts focused, and sets specific objectives and clear accountability for other members of the management team,” says Gee. The Yates Memo and the push for individual accountability reinforce the value of such an exercise for company leaders. Gee thinks companies don’t engage in this exercise enough–setting and evaluating specific compliance goals—and that lack of focus and follow-up is a common weakness of laboratory compliance programs. He and his colleague Caitlin Forsyth will be discussing similar compliance best practices at G2 Intelligence’s live conference event, Lab Revolution, April 6-8, 2016, in Chandler, Arizona. For further discussion of the Yates Memo and the top 10 compliance issues for 2016, see Compliance Perspectives on page 5.