Turning healthcare compliance into innovation and profit : developing healthcare compliance into a strategic complementary asset

Abstract

The European Healthcare systems will be changing dramatically in the coming years due to demographic shifts, budget constraints, and the need for innovation. The Healthcare industry is one of the industry sectors that is particularly vulnerable to corruption. While in the previous years the Compliance functions primarily focused on reactive and operational tasks, the time has now come to transfer Healthcare Compliance into a strategic asset, leveraging the knowledge on policies and regulations, but also on process weaknesses and unexplored correlations between stakeholders. It is worth evaluation the benefit from merging a legal-based Compliance function with an incubation oriented function, where ultimately the respective business will own the processes. Analysing the status-quo, elaborating on the various interests on the stakeholders groups, will be the basis to further explore how the potential of this function could be harvested. The intention of the survey amongst Healthcare Professionals of seven European Member States was to find common reasons for corruption problems as well as the external root causes which led to them. Emerging technology enablers and disrupters are prompting many enterprises to rethink their strategy, and the Healthcare Compliance is on the front of the implementation of many of these. If leveraged strategically, the Compliance function can help to identify new business opportunities, harvesting the internal information from monitoring and auditing. Collaboration with government bodies for the compliant and successful implementation of policies and regulations will also be a new way to generate advantages in the reimbursement negotiations. Value-based Healthcare, putting the benefit for the patient in the centre of the efforts, is changing the measurements for the sector. New ways to the patient, e.g. electronical services, create value but must be introduced by considering the legal framework, the different stakeholders, and the ethical aspects. The Healthcare Compliance function, integrated in the development of future business models, can be the competitive advantage for the long-term success and the establishment of new delivery models, new calculation models for reimbursement, and value-based treatment options.