Dental providers must remain compliant with labor laws, privacy laws, and health and safety laws. Noncompliance can cause a number of headaches for practices and they are easily preventable when there are sound systems in place. Here, we will go through some of the best compliances practices you should consider adopting if you are a dental care provider.
Best Compliance Practices for Dental Providers
Dental provider teams need to be aware of a number of critical laws and regulations. OSHA regulations are included in this. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is tasked with overseeing compliance in the dentistry field, along with all other fields of work, in order to help ensure the safety and well-being of workers and patients alike. In addition to OSHA regulation, HIPAA compliance will also be critical. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 dictates requirements pertaining to the privacy and security of patient data. As such, dental providers must put certain safeguards in place in both the physical and cyberspace to help ensure patient information remains secure.
To help establish the best practices to ensure a dental provider remains compliant, the practice itself should develop certain systems and safeguards. A good starting point is to create a comprehensive checklist of the laws and standards that must be met. This means the checklist will include requirements impacting the workplace itself as well as its technology and the activities of staff members. Upon completion of the checklist, tasks can be delegated to team members who will be responsible for overseeing their successful completion and maintenance.
While compliance tasks can be delegated to staff members, it is usually a good idea to appoint a compliance officer to oversee these endeavors as well as make sure that everything actually gets done. For bigger practices, it might be best to have both an OSHA compliance officer and a HIPAA compliance officer. The separation of these two compliance fields can help ensure the officer gets a solid grasp on what needs to be done to remain in compliance.
There are also OSHA consultants who can work with dental providers to help them build a practice that will remain compliant with the applicable laws and regulations. They can also help the practice run through what an OSHA inspection would look like. This can allow the dental practice the time to make changes to areas where they are at greater risk of noncompliance.
Even if a practice has a dedicated compliance officer and has delegated compliance tasks among staff members, it is still important that regulatory requirements be checked up on and reviewed with some frequency. You see, regulations are constantly changing, especially as industry changes and advancements in security and safety proceed. Constant vigilance in monitoring the relevant regulations to the dental industry is a critical part of helping to ensure a dental practice remains compliant.
Dental Law Attorney
Avoid the infractions and headaches that can come with falling out of compliance with state laws and pertinent regulations for your dental practice. Talk to the team at Mahan Dental Law about how you can set your practice up for success. Contact us today.
