National Compliance Week was established to highlight the importance of compliance and ethics. Cooper University Health Care is dedicated to conducting our mission of providing high-quality health care in accordance with the highest levels of business ethics and in compliance with all applicable federal and state laws, regulations, and requirements. Our Corporate Compliance Department and a Chief Compliance Officer – appointed by Cooper’s Board of Trustees – ensures that we detect and prevent health care fraud, waste, and abuse, as well as protect the privacy of our patients and employees.
The Compliance Department is charged with:
- Establishing a Code of Ethical Conduct.
- Providing guidance on how to resolve questions regarding legal, ethical, and regulatory issues.
- Establishing and monitoring a hotline for the reporting of suspected or known violations of legal or ethical principles with the health system.
- Screening for providers, staff and/or vendors sanctioned by or excluded from providing any item or service to be paid for by a federal health care program.
- Auditing to identify potential errors resulting in overpayments and refunding those overpayments.
- Monitoring corrective action plans.
- Conflict of Interest management.
- New hire and annual compliance education.
Cooper’s compliance team includes a Compliance Specialist, Compliance Coordinator, and auditors dedicated to professional compliance reviews or hospital compliance reviews.
The Compliance team is assisted in its oversight mission by close working relationships with the medical staff members, administration, legal, information security and privacy, revenue cycle, internal audit, human resources, research, and all members of the compliance committees and working groups.
Remember – compliance with federal, state, and local laws, professional standards, federally funded health care regulations and policies, is every Cooper team member’s responsibility.