Catherine Boerner (cboerner@boernerconsultingllc.com) President of Boerner Consulting LLC, New Berlin, WI.
Whether you have one person in the compliance and/or privacy department or ten, it is a good idea to create a main “Reference Library” folder with subfolders by topic. There are too many areas that compliance and privacy officers need to be aware of and at times become the expert in. As you receive your continuing education, place the presentations each year by topic in the applicable folder in your internal reference library. Also, as you search for articles, those can be placed into the applicable folders as well, as good reference materials.
Other ideas are to put in the pages of applicable sections of Medicare manuals or the entire Medicare manual with the sections highlighted or referenced. You may just want a document that provides the description and links to the Medicare manual and Medicare Learning Network (MLN) article for a quick reference and updated materials. I like to include the MLN Matters article index in a separate reference folder.
For example, The MLN Matters article index November 15, 2019–April 2021 includes links to all the articles on a topic:
-
ABLATION = MM12183, MM12175, MM12183, MM11605, MM11607, MM11814, MM11842, SE1418
-
ADVANCE BENEFICIARY NOTICE (ABN) = MM11491, MM11655, MM11905, SE20012, MM12027
-
COVID-19 = MM11742, MM11784, MM11810, MM11879, MM12062, MM12131, MM12175, MM12185, MM11623, MM11640, MM11656, MM11661, MM11680, MM11681, MM11691, MM11742, MM11759, MM11764, MM11765, MM11784, MM11791, MM11792, MM11805, MM11810, MM11814, MM11815, MM11836, MM11879, MM11927, MM11937, MM11956, MM11960, SE20011, SE20015, MM12047
-
FACE-TO-FACE = SE20016, SE20016, MM9476, MM12185, MM12202, MM11500, MM11599, MM11814, SE1419, SE19027, SE20003, SE20007, SE20011, SE20016, MM12035, MM12046
-
INFUSION = MM12244, MM12133, MM12133, MM12020, MM12120, MM11064, MM12108, MM12175, SE18011, MM11623, MM11729, MM11750, MM11854, MM11880, SE1624, SE17010, SE19005, SE19029, SE20011, MM11954
Of course, the trick to maintaining the reference library is to include the date of the source or the date something is added. This will help ensure the reference material is a good start, but further research may be needed if the reference is a few years old. You may want to include links and a screenshot to quickly get something off the internet without trying to search. These links then hopefully will take you to the most current information than if you saved the document at the time of your research.
These are all some idea on how to build your reference library to expedite research on compliance topics. It is nice when everyone on the team can add to a shared reference library to benefit from any research conducted.