Jenny O’Brien on Who’s Really in Compliance [Podcast]

3
1613

By Adam Turteltaub
adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org

As I’ve written before for the blog, there’s a problem compliance people are facing:  many people are too willing to write that a so-called compliance officer has been arrested, fined or imprisoned.  Problem is, those compliance officers weren’t really regulatory and legal compliance professionals as we know them.

There’s one more problem, your organization may be contributing to this situation;  You may have people in your organization with “compliance” in their title but don’t actually work on the compliance team.

Jenny O’Brien, at United Healthcare had precisely that problem. When she assumed the role of Chief Compliance Officer she found out that there were a couple of hundred people not on the compliance team but with compliance titles.

This posed significant risks.  People were “clearing things through compliance” without ever actually talking to compliance.  In addition, the fact that people didn’t know who truly was a compliance officer led to dangerous confusion, and the potential of the government stating that the compliance program didn’t meet the standards for effectiveness.

Listen in as she relates how she remedied this situation via what turned out to be a year-long project.  In the podcast she shares:

  • How she enlisted the help of HR and the business units
  • The process for developing new titles for affected personnel
  • The importance of regularly auditing to see if new people that shouldn’t have received compliance titles, nonetheless
  • The surprising upside to the process and the attachment many have to compliance

 

3 COMMENTS

  1. Your article is important for organizations to understand and act upon. Health systems can conflate activities such as accreditation, with the word “compliance”, even setting up separate committees and structures for each that confuses the organization about the true purpose and benefit of strong, credible, and comprehensive, enterprise-level compliance program.

  2. Before a title or department is assigned the activities that define compliance should be clearly identified. This is the real issue. Compliance, as a profession, has yet to clearly define its characteristics. It’s currently an amorphous blend of audit and law. This is where the profession needs to focus. Expectations should be the byproduct of defined competencies and goals.

Comments are closed.