Compliance Today (March 2024)
There it is on page 39, under “Compliance Leadership and Oversight: The Compliance Officer’s Primary Responsibilities”:
“. . . the compliance officer should not lead or report to the entity’s legal or financial functions, and should not provide the entity with legal or financial advice or supervise anyone who does. The compliance officer should report directly to the CEO or the board.”[1]
This comes from the November 2023 General Compliance Program Guidance (GCPG) issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG). This is the first in a series of updated guidance documents OIG plans to issue. And OIG’s support of autonomy for the compliance officer is very clear.
After increasingly hearing about situations in which the compliance leader has been pushed underneath general counsel or other functional leaders, to me this guidance couldn’t be more timely or more appreciated.
OIG also assuredly expressed its support for ensuring the compliance function is sufficiently resourced, stating that the compliance officer should “have sufficient funding, resources, and staff to operate a compliance program capable of identifying, preventing, mitigating, and remediating the entity’s compliance risks.” Later, the guidance mirrors this support concerning the compliance function’s data analytics capabilities and resources.
But the backing of OIG doesn’t stop there. Recognizing the importance of the relationship between compliance and the board of directors, as well as the need for support from the top, the GCPG goes on to say, “The board should ensure that the compliance officer has sufficient power, independence, and resources . . .” and “the board also should regularly review whether the compliance officer and the compliance program have sufficient staff and resources for an entity of its size, complexity, and interaction with Federal health care programs.”
Having the backing of OIG on issues that are so critical to our profession is very helpful—stated so clearly and forcefully; we couldn’t ask for more. As a profession, we owe a big thank you to OIG.
1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, General Compliance Program Guidance, November 2023, 39, https://oig.hhs.gov/documents/compliance-guidance/1135/HHS-OIG-GCPG-2023.pdf.
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