Challenges Faced By Effective Health Care Management Policy and Procedure

The foundation of the success of a health organization is its health care management policy and procedure. At times, they can make or break the survival of an organization. These procedures and policies are what stakeholders, physicians, and staff relies on to establish standards on how certain processes should be conducted. These include facets like right protecting patient information, processing payments, admitting patients, meeting healthcare compliance regulations, and conducting surgical procedures. A health care management policy and procedure is also of importance to regulators, auditors and attorneys who use them to check if services were delivered in accordance to company norms. If they weren't, the company would be under the risk of lawsuits or noncompliance penalties that resulted from the occurrence of fatal medical errors. As healthcare organizations have grown in size, so has the focus on a key health care management policy and procedure to be more diverse and complex. There needs to be a well-defined health care management policy and procedure in place to reduce medical errors, to ensure consistency in operations, and to ensure patient safety. Challenges faced by effective policy and procedure management Here are some challenges and roadblocks that are faced by a health care management policy and procedure of an organization: € Too much documentation: Most healthcare organization are plagued with having to deal with loads of paperwork that relate to insurance information, patient records, healthcare compliance requirements and lots more. In addition to that, they are also faced with vast documents for the a health care management policy and procedure that could stretch into thousands of pages, covering things like recruitment, processes, billing, regulatory practices and administration of medication. Due to the sheer size of the information, it can be a bit tedious to store, manage, and retrieve documents when they are required promptly. € Management of documents manually: Most healthcare organizations store their health care management policy and procedure in binders, which make it very laborious and time-consuming to sift through it. If a medical practitioner needs to draw up some information urgently for an emergency procedure, it could be a waste of valuable time to sift through these tedious binders. € Risks pertaining to security: Managing documents electronically is cost - effective and time-efficient, but also poses the risk of information theft and hacking. Due to the fact that cyber crime is constantly on the rise and is getting more sophisticated with each passing day, it is a never ending challenge to protect this confidential information from these risks and to secure this sensitive information. € Increasing compliance regulations: There is a large number of compliance regulations that health care organizations are constantly being confronted with. Things like CMS, HIPAA, RAC audits, and OIG, each regulation calls for a separate health care management policy and procedure. It takes to maintain HIPAA policies, in addition to other information such as notices, privacy practices, and complaints dispositions. This leads to tons of pages of documentation.