We work best with smaller organizations, but ones with a certain unique character.

It is not uncommon to take an informal approach to compliance. Large corporations even do it. Even in highly regulated industries. Even when they have people with "compliance" in their job titles. Smaller organizations are no different in this regard in general. And the average person would not expect small businesses, with less resources and less money at their disposal, to understand every regulatory or business risk they could face.

Even those small business leaders that do explicitly think about how to manage compliance often decide that the risk of being found out of compliance is minimal and then they turn back to more pressing business matters. From that point, either a formalized compliance program either never happens or maybe compliance gets attention for a few hours once a year. Such entities are not ones that are likely to benefit much from our services.

The businesses and organizations that hire us tend to be ones that are fully engaged with their business environment. Their owners like to understand what stakeholders, including those beyond just current patients or customers, expect from them.

Regulators Have Great Expectations - Even If You’re Small

Oftentimes, regulations allow for different expectations for large and small entities that must function under the regulations. Such variations usually have to do with the sophistication (and often the costs) of tools and technologies that a large organization would be expected to use where a smaller entity might be allowed to apply simpler and cheaper methods. With the modern explosion of computing power, the simpler and cheaper technologies and approaches that are most accessible for small organizations do not have to be mean “subpar” solutions. Confidence in working with those common technologies is a key part of what Cover Compliance can bring to our clients’ compliance programs.

But even with some allowance for simpler and cheaper tools in small-entity compliance management, it is important to remember: Small organizations often still have to accomplish the same basic things that large organizations do, even if regulators wouldn’t expect small businesses to spend huge amounts of money to do so. For example, a single physician practice still must be able to accommodate a patient’s access to their own medical records, including providing information on the physician’s uses of their information. For another example, a small retail business that accepts credit cards must also avoid retaining payment card information longer than necessary, too. Large organizations may have automated means of fulfilling the obligations just noted in both of those examples, but they probably also have automated ways to validate how those solutions work, and someone whose full-time job it is to monitor the reports and dashboards produced by those systems.

But Who Else May Be Watching You

We've already alluded to how we feel about the "I'm too small for a regulator to pay any attention to me" perspective. People who feel that way have probably stopped reading already. And we won't argue against that perspective being true. Odds very often are in favor of a small entity being overlooked by regulators, especially federal regulators. Even at the state and sometimes local level (think city ordinances and maintaining business operating licenses), odds may be that you wouldn't face a regulatory inquiry if you generally manage your business in a fair and equitable manner. But…

At the core, small entities face not only the same types of regulatory compliance obligations as larger, resource-rich competitors. They also face the same demands from contract partners and business associates and same expectations from consumers, patients, and other individuals that larger entities do. And often the differential advantages that small entities offer—personal service, better knowledge of their customers, more flexibility in responding to unique customer needs—result in even higher expectations from customers and increased impact of a negative experience or perspective from a single customer.

We Like “Disruptors”

The entities we work with are often "disruptors" in multiple ways. Compliance disruptors look at the cost of compliance efforts against the risks of failures happening; but they also use the same entrepreneurial "gut instinct” that helped them create their business to help point them toward doing what's right and toward creating the compliance ethics and culture they want their brand to reflect.

Cover Compliance exists to minimize the pain small entities experience in managing their operations so that they know what they need to do to meet compliance expectations of key stakeholders. We meet our clients where they are, and find ways to use tools they likely already have (such as common desktop software). We work to create understandable, manageable compliance programs that give our clients literacy and confidence about meeting their obligations. Together, we establish the policies needed to direct compliance in their operations, create full procedures that they need to fulfill their own policies, and define the control mechanisms and ongoing compliance monitoring procedures to maintain confidence that their program continues to function properly day in and day out.