I have been reading about recent enforcement actions against doctors and thinking about how compliance officers can try to help protect doctors from violating the law and becoming the subject of these.

The enforcement actions—coupled with a review of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) General Compliance Program Guidance (GCPG)^[1] and OIG’s A Roadmap for New Physicians: Avoiding Medicare and Medicaid Fraud and Abuse^[2] —provide some answers.

I think a key may be to break it down for doctors in their compliance training, so they seek and ask about processes to help protect them from the risks they face—especially if they have any concerns after the compliance training. Engage the doctors so they want to know how the organization is trying to protect them.