Compliance Perspectives

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Richard Bistrong from Front-Line Anti-Bribery does a great deal of face to face training on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and anti-bribery in general. While we were both participating in an anti-corruption conference in Beijing, Richard sat down and shared his insights from time talking with and listening to compliance professionals, the workforce and management. In this podcast he observes that knowledge about the FCPA’s requirements is generally not the problem:  workers understand it’s illegal to pay bribes.  The challenge that they are facing is how to work successfully in high risk geographies where their competitors may not be playing by the rules. Many on the commercial side, he has found, believe that compliance doesn’t understand the challenges that they are up against.  To succeed, he believes, compliance needs to admit to the challenge and invite business people to share with the compliance team the risks that they face and then work together to devise an effective response. Listen in to learn more about what he has found is on the commercial team’s mind, and also the challenge when it comes to working with management.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Metrics are central for most everything in business, including compliance and ethics.  The key thing, though, is finding the right metrics.  Measure the wrong things, and you won’t know how you program is working.  Measure the right things but in the wrong way, and you can easily be just as lost. Carl Hahn, Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer of Northrop Grumman has given the topic a great deal of thought, and put his thoughts into practice.  In this podcast he shares his expertise and addresses the following topics: * What metrics are the most valuable for measuring the effectiveness of a compliance and ethics program * What data is important to collect from groups outside of compliance * The challenges in collecting the right data, and how to overcome those challenges * The key allies when it comes to developing and using metrics * Turning the data into something usable for assessing the effectiveness of your program Listen in to learn how to better improve your own metrics.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org In January 2017 the Health Care Compliance Association worked with the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services to host a roundtable.  The goal was to provide content for a tool that would enable compliance officers to better assess the effectiveness of their compliance program. The result of that effort was released later that year.  Since then Measuring Compliance Program Effectiveness:  A Resource Guide has proven an invaluable aid for compliance community. Laura Ellis, Senior Counsel in the Office of Counsel to the Inspector General at HHS, explain that it is filled with questions designed to assess various parts of compliance programs and how they are functioning.  It is intended for organizations to use internally and is centered around the seven elements of an effective compliance and ethics program. Importantly, this is not designed to be a tool for enforcement to use as a yardstick.  Instead, it is for compliance professionals to use to make their programs better, whether the organization they work for is large, medium or small. Not every question in the guide is going to be relevant for every organization.  Nor could any organization possibly assess itself on every measure annually.  Rather, as she explains, it is best to be used selectively and regularly to asses various compliance program elements. Listen in to learn more about how to put this important document to work for your organization.  

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Karen Moore is a compliance officer who has worked both in Europe and in the US.  Like most people, in the course of her career she had chosen to leave one job for another. The easy changes are the ones where a great new opportunity comes out of nowhere, and you just can’t say no.  Sometimes, though, there is the opposite situation:  the job grows to be intolerable.  You dread coming in and every minute of the day. In her conversation with us, Karen talks about how to know when it’s time to leave.  She addresses the signs to watch out for, such as a lack of commitment by management.  She also discusses what to do to try and make things better, allies you can turn to, and how to know that there isn’t any hope. Finally, the conversation turns to both preserving your professional reputation and meeting professional obligations.  To learn more about the latter, be sure to check out the Code of Professional Ethics for Compliance and Ethics Professionals.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org What does the DOJ think about compliance programs?  What do they look for when meeting with a company?  What does this mean for how I think about compliance? Daniel Kahn, the Chief of the FCPA Unit at the US Department of Justice, was generous enough to share his insights into these issues and many others in this podcast.  Listen in as he addresses several topics that compliance professionals are eager to better understand.  Some highlights of his talk include: * When it comes to corruption prosecutions, don’t only think about the US government. Recognize that multiple foreign governments may be involved, and with multiple approaches.  Amongst other things, it could affect your decision of disclosing not just to the DOJ, but prosecutors from other countries as well * The DOJ’s FCPA Corporate Enforcement Policy has been formalized, and a great deal of emphasis has been placed on compliance programs. The impact of the policy can be seen in various settlements and enforcement actions. * Because compliance is risk- and company-specific, the compliance program should reflect the company’s unique situation. It’s not enough to say what the program looks like, you should be able to articulate why it looks that way and demonstrate a well-thought-out, targeted approach. * When presenting data on effectiveness, it’s not enough just to show, for example, the number of helpline calls. You need to show what happened as a result of them:  Were they investigated? What categories did they fall into?  What was the organization’s response? * While obtaining a certification for your compliance program can be perceived positively as a demonstration of a company’s good faith efforts, it is not a proxy for the Department of Justice doing its own evaluation of the compliance program Listen in to hear the full interview and all of his insights.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Compliance officers are used to answering questions from the workforce, management, regulators and sometimes even prosecutors.  Increasingly, some are answering questions about their compliance program from bank underwriters. Margaret Hambleton, who is the Vice President for Corporate Compliance and Chief Compliance Officer for Dignity Health (and current president of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Health Care Compliance Association), is no stranger to this relatively new phenomenon.  She’s been through the process more than once and in this podcast shares her experience. Thankfully, as she reports, it’s not an interrogation and is generally a very collegial process with questions provided in advance.  Listen in as she explains how the discussions typically go, how best to prepare for them, and some of the side benefits of the process.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org At the 2018 HCCA Compliance Institute, Lloyd Dean, the CEO of Dignity Health wowed the crowd as he discussed his very positive perspective on compliance and the importance of compliance programs to the organization. During his speech he shared five compliance-related questions that he always asks when evaluating a new business opportunity.  Two things were intriguing about those questions.  First, they had clearly been internalized within executive decision making.  The compliance team didn’t have to ask them;  management already did.  Second, the questions were both simple and insightful, enabling management to quickly get a sense of whether there were potential risks that would require the compliance team’s help. Margaret Hambleton, the Vice President for Corporate Compliance and Chief Compliance Officer for Dignity Health (and current president of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Health Care Compliance Association), is the author of those questions.  They are specific to healthcare, but, as she explains in this podcast, could be customized for any industry. * Does the idea/process/opportunity require an exchange of anything of value with a patient, physician or other referral source? * Does it change the way services are documented, billed, coded or reimbursed? * Are there any improper motives or conflicts for doing the planned thing, particularly those related to clinical decision making? * Does it require sharing protected healthcare information or business confidential information outside of our network? * Does it require evaluation by any other experts in the organization? Listen in as she explains the genesis of the questions, how she helped management learn them, and how the right set of questions can make a big difference in how management looks at compliance.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org You hear a lot about compliance programs in healthcare, but not so much about ethics programs.  Sure, there are many discussions of medical ethics, but not as many conversations, at least at conferences, about the business ethics issues. Ryan Meade, Director, Regulatory Compliance Studies at the Center for Compliance Studies at Loyola University Chicago School of Law believes that the sheer volume of regulations that the healthcare industry faces tend to keep the focus on compliance.  Medicare alone, after all, has over 200,000 pages of rules. Yet, healthcare isn’t the only heavily regulated industry with lots of compliance requirements.  Defense contractors have their own mountain of regulations to climb and yet manage to maintain a strong focus on ethics. As you’ll hear in his podcast, Ryan argues that compliance has three characteristics: * The law * The organization’s policies * Ethics Organizations need to comply with the law, he explains, but also have to instill a culture of ethics so help answer tough questions:  What do you do when the law is silent and your policies are silent?  How do you want yourself and your workforce to act? Listen in to learn about the value in making ethics a more integral part of your compliance program, steps you can take to make it happen, how to overcome resistance, and the benefits you can expect.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Auditing and monitoring are essential elements of compliance programs and an ongoing challenge for organizations.  Many struggle with what to assess, how often and who should do the assessing. To help compliance professionals address this challenge, Cindy Matson, Senior Executive Director, Compliance, Sanford Health and two of her colleagues led a session on the topic at the 2018 Compliance Institute.  Cindy was also good enough to sit down for a podcast. Here she lays down practical advice for auditing and monitoring including: * How frequently you should assess specific elements of your program * The need to taking a risk-based approach to auditing and monitoring * The value of audit histories * Working with internal audit collaboratively * Understanding precisely what it is you are auditing Listen in, and start rocking your auditing and monitoring efforts.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org At the 2018 Compliance and Ethics Institute (CEI) we will be joined by keynoter Scott Eblin, founder of The Eblin Group and the author of Overworked and Overwhelmed and The Next Level:  What Insiders Know About Executive Success.  He is an inspiring and thoughtful speaker who earned great praise from attendees of the Compliance Institute. In this podcast, he gives a preview of some of the concepts he’ll be presenting during his talk at the CEI.  He begins by discussing the importance of three types of presence: * Personal presence is about how you manage yourself * Team presence is about how you manage your team and move from self to team reliance * Organizational presence is about engaging your colleagues and picking up an outside-in view of your organization. Scott then addresses a tool he created known as the LifeGPS.  It asks three questions designed to help business people function more successfully. Finally, he discusses the importance of mindfulness. Listen in and then hear Scott live at the 2018 Compliance and Ethics Institute.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Roz Bliss is the Manager, Global Integrity at Northrop Grumman.  One of the responsibilities of that role is putting together a meeting for the global ethics team.  It’s not an easy task, with such a large and spread out team. Over the years she’s learned to manage not just the logistics but the substance of the meeting as well.  By chance Northrop Grumman was having a team meeting at the same time and hotel as the 2018 SCCE Basic Compliance and Ethics Academy in Amsterdam.  While we were both there, she sat down to share her experience on the ingredients of a successful team meeting. Listen in as she shares her tips, including: * Know your audience, including how on-time it tends to be (it varies by country) * State your purpose and manage expectations up front * Be considerate of the time of participants * Involve the right people in planning, including some who may oppose what you plan on doing * Plan on asking questions: don’t make the whole program a speech * When following up, include people who were unable to participate  

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Most companies are well-versed in handling discipline in the context of a compliance failure.  But when it comes to the other side of the coin – providing incentives for and reward good behavior – many struggle.  That’s a problem given that providing incentives is one of the elements of an effective compliance program. Greg Triguba, one of the faculty members at the SCCE Basic Compliance and Ethics Academies, argues that incentives may be more important than discipline.  People want to see what the company cares about in a positive way, and simply having incentives for good behavior, like having them for sales, says that this is what the company cares about. In this podcast, recorded at the SCCE Academy in Amsterdam, Greg addresses: * The importance of the compliance and ethics team having a seat at the table when the company is formulating its incentives program * The use of past failures to make the case for including incentives * Using the code of conduct as a basis for setting standards * Thinking beyond cash incentives Listen in.  You’ll find his thoughts on incentives rewarding.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org At the 2018 Compliance Institute in Las Vegas, Jennifer Michael was good enough to sit down for a podcast.  Jennifer is the Chief, Industry Guidance Branch, Office of Counsel to the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services. In this brief but fact-filled session she provides an overview of HHS Secretary Alex Azar’s key priorities:  combatting the opioid crisis, decreasing the cost of prescription drugs and increasing the accessibility and affordability of healthcare.  She also addresses: * Value-based payment arrangements and the push for value over volume * Having a strong process for identifying risk areas * Recent key advisory opinions 1701, 1703 and the rescission of advisory opinion 0604 Listen in to hear her perspective.

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Not getting indicted is a very low bar to set and one that few, if any organizations, aspire to.  The vast majority want a company that operates lawfully and with an ethical culture.  But how do you get there? Sally March addresses the topic both in this podcast and when she teaches at the International SCCE Basic Compliance and Ethics Academies.  While at the Amsterdam Academy she took some time away to share her thoughts on organizational ethics. Join us as she discusses: * The growing expectation that the board should be responsible for creating an ethical culture, both because it is the right thing to do and because it leads to long-term business success * The importance of purpose and values for aligning workforces, no matter how dispersed they may be * The value of honest conversations about tough situations * Giving employees the opportunity to practice handling real-life scenarios, especially those that actually happened inside the organization * Soliciting feedback from employees as well as customers and suppliers * Making the business case internally for ethics

By Adam Turteltaub adam.turteltaub@corporatecompliance.org Shawn DeGroot is not a big fan of waiting for the regulators to knock.  Instead, she advises compliance officers to reach out to regulators proactively, even before anything goes wrong.  By establishing a relationship with the regulator, she explains, you can build trust and have a resource when you need one. In this podcast she explains: * The benefits of having a relationship with the regulators * The need to remember that regulators are human and have a job to do * The importance of honesty and transparency * How you communicate can be especially important * What to do after a conversation that went wrong Listen in before you reach out to your regulator, whether for the first time or the umpteenth time.