News-At-A-Glance

WHO SHOULD COMPLIANCE OFFICER REPORT TO? An overwhelming majority (80 percent) of compliance officers opposed having their compliance department report to their organization’s corporate counsel, according to a survey from the Health Care Compliance Association and the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics released March 7. The survey, Should Compliance Report to the General Counsel?, also found that 88 percent of compliance officers opposed having the organization’s corporate counsel serve as the chief compliance officer. The online survey was conducted in January and February and included responses from more than 800 compliance officers representing private and public companies as well as nonprofit organizations. Forty-nine percent of respondents were from health care organizations. A central reason for the opposition to reporting to the corporate counsel, and having a corporate counsel serve as chief compliance officer, was a fear over potential conflicts of interest, the survey said. For example, one respondent said there was a potential conflict of interest between the role of compliance officers, which involves uncovering an organization’s weaknesses, and the role of the chief counsel, which involves defending an organization from legal attacks. EHR AND UPCODING CONCERNS: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) remains committed to ensuring Medicare providers adopt electronic health records (EHRs), despite an increase in claims upcoding that may be related to the systems, acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner told hospital executives March 5. Speaking at a Federation of American Hospitals conference, Tavenner said CMS will spend more time this year educating providers about the use of EHRs and will conduct “small, targeted audits” to ensure electronic billing is being “done properly.” Tavenner said there has been an increase in upcoding in physician offices and hospital emergency rooms, possibly related to the use of EHRs. The increased use by providers of EHRs may be helping CMS uncover more instances of upcoding than in the past, and/or the design of the system may somehow be contributing to the increase in upcoding, Tavenner said.