OIG Code Of Conduct

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) was established in 1976 with the goal to restrain frauds, abuses, and wastes in healthcare services for Medicare, Medicaid, and other Health and Human Services. OIG advises healthcare organizations to follow the OIG guidelines on establishing effective compliance and ethical policies. The policies will help organizations to identify and stop inappropriate performance from happening. The content of each policy will be determined by individual healthcare organization. However, OIG recommends seven basic steps that healthcare organizations should use to construct their procedures (Safian, 2009, p. 40).
First, healthcare organizations must force their employees to follow the written compliance standards and procedures program to prevent inappropriate manners. The standards should provide detailed instructions of the behaviors that organizations want their employees to perform. It should address liability risks that are applicable to the organizations’ operation. The standards should also clearly define the channel of communication to report improper actions and the punishing methods if violations occur. The organizations can use the program as a guideline to evaluate their employees’ performance (Oach, 2016, p. 285). OIG requires healthcare organizations to run periodic …show more content…
They should have the control to execute and enforce the policies. Certain individuals must be assigned authorities for daily operations of the program, such as the director of the compliance department. There should be sufficient resources for those individuals to successfully run the program. Besides, the leaders of organizations are expected to adhere to the policies of the program in their day-to-day functions and set the good examples for all staffs to follow. Following compliance standards is the duty of everyone (Safian, 2009, p.