Healthcare Lawyer Warns Texas Dental Medicaid Providers to Have in Place an Effective Compliance Program or Risk Serious Regulatory Consequences

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Greg Ewing

Inadequate regulatory compliance may translate into having a workforce with inadequate training or awareness, which could lead to billing errors and non-compliance activities, fines, penalties, and potential imprisonment.

Austin, Tx (PRWEB) December 30, 2013

Healthcare lawyer Gregory Ewing warns in his newly published article available on the website of Texas Dentists for Medicaid Reform that an effective and comprehensive healthcare compliance program is a necessity for Texas Medicaid dentists. He makes the point that providers who are not on top of the situation risk serious regulatory consequences regardless of their altruistic motives for being a Medicaid provider.

Ewing who is also president of TDMR is writing a series of articles about healthcare compliance issues for TDMR. This first article is entitled "The New Compliance and Enforcement Landscape and What To Do About It." It is now available online on the TDMR website.

The article details the strict enforcement environment that has been brought about by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and aggressive Texas state enforcement agencies. This has made the need for an effective and comprehensive compliance program a necessity to safeguard dental Medicaid providers from serious allegations of fraud and program violations.

Ewing warns that:

"Many smaller organizations lack the expertise in regulatory compliance, and the demands of the practice do not allow them to stay abreast of the latest regulatory changes, while remaining current in their respective practice areas. This situation forces them to rely on personnel who are typically not well versed with the various rules, regulations, and industry requirements and are over-burdened with day-to-day activities of providing quality health care to adequately develop, maintain, update, and implement a robust compliance plan.

"The implication is that many organizations are out of compliance with many of the regulatory requirements for providing health care. Inadequate regulatory compliance may translate into having a workforce with inadequate training or awareness, which could lead to billing errors and non-compliance activities, fines, penalties, and potential imprisonment. Non-compliance exposes health care providers to hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of dollars in fines and penalties."

Greg Ewing has over 15 years experience in transactional health law; health information technology; privacy and security compliance, assessment, and remediation. His law degree is from Boston University School of Law, and he holds a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his coursework and qualifying examinations toward a Ph.D. in health policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

Texas Dentists for Medicaid Reform is a 501(c)4 founded by dental practitioners "concerned about the future of dental care for the over three million Texas children eligible for Medicaid."

For more information, contact TDMR.

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