Memorandum: Review Draft Healthcare Compliance Program Document Assignment

Overview

As you have discovered, a healthcare compliance program is central to healthcare compliance in general and any specific healthcare organization’s healthcare compliance in particular. Further, you have seen that a great healthcare compliance program will not be useful and effective unless it is properly implemented in the specific healthcare organization or setting. Given all of that, the specifics of the actual healthcare compliance program document is extremely important. The purpose of this assignment is to allow you to review an actual draft healthcare compliance program document, considering its strengths, weaknesses, and suitability as a base document in the context of a specific hypothetical situation.

Therefore, this assignment asks you to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the draft plan, assess whether it would be good starting point for use in the drafting process for the client, and then explain all of this to the client. In addition, the assignment asks you to determine whether the draft plan addresses all of the important issues that should be covered and to identify the ones, if any, that are not addressed in the draft plan. The assignment also asks you to consider any other issues that the client should be aware of throughout the drafting process. This is beneficial to you because: (1) explaining something to someone else requires that you really master it yourself and (2) healthcare compliance professionals are often tasked with explaining healthcare compliance issues to providers and other medical professionals.

Finally, this assignment asks you to consider how the faith of a group of Christian healthcare professionals such as our hypothetical client should be reflected in their healthcare compliance document. There are numerous issues of concern to Christian healthcare professionals including: end-of-life and physician-assisted suicide issues, abortion issues, transgender and related issues, etc. Christian healthcare compliance professionals should be able to address and help others address these important issues.

Instructions

Given the quality of your previous work for Peaks of Otter Family Medicine, Inc., a Virginia corporation (“Peaks” or the “Corporation”), on previous Memorandum Assignments, Sally and the Board want your help as they work on drafting the Corporation’s compliance program documents. The Office Manager, Sally Johnson, who also serves as the Treasurer and COO for the Corporation, will be the point person for this project and is your main point of contact.

Sally has identified a draft plan online (See Draft Healthcare Compliance Program Document: Compliance Plan) She is considering using this as a base form from which to draft the compliance plan for the Corporation. Therefore, Sally has asked you to draft a memorandum to her evaluating the plan and answering the following questions. Carefully read and review the plan in light of all that you have learned so far in the course, including assigned readings from this Module: Week. Then, draft the memorandum evaluating the draft plan and specifically addressing the following:

• What the strengths and weaknesses of the draft plan? Do you think it would be good starting point for use in the drafting process? Why or why not?
• Does the draft plan address all of the important areas that should be addressed? If not, which ones are left out and what types of materials need to be added?
• Are there other issues that Sally should be thinking about as she is drafting the Corporation’s compliance documents?
• Remember, Sally and all of the physicians are evangelical Christians, and their faith is very important to them. They feel that they live it out in their practice.  How would their faith impact Peaks’ compliance documents?

Prepare your memorandum using the memorandum assignment template provided. Your memorandum should be in good Bluebook format, contain 1-inch margins, use 12-point Ariel or Times New Roman font, be double-spaced (with footnotes, if used, in a smaller font, single-spaced, and indented), and follow the formatting of the memorandum assignment template provided. 

You do not need a cover page or a bibliography, reference list, etc. Your memorandum must be at least 1,750 words in length and cite as well as utilize a minimum of 5 scholarly, academic or legal sources. Scholarly, academic or legal sources provided in the course materials should be preferred to the extent that they are relevant to the assignment.  Please note, this is not requiring a minimum of 5 citations but rather 5 sources. You should have numerous citations throughout your memorandum as every major assertion should be supported by a citation to relevant authority.

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.