Compliance Monitoring in Healthcare

Why is compliance monitoring in health so important? 

Compliance monitoring in healthcare is critical to ensuring the proper storage of items. Some items, for example, need to be refrigerated, so a compliance audit for hospitals would check to ensure that those items were being stored in an appropriately cool environment. Having a compliance monitoring plan or, better yet, a holistic compliance auditing and monitoring policy) can help keep your facility compliant with industry standards. Your compliance work plan might consist of several elements, including room temperature, light, and air pressure. It all depends on what type of equipment you manage.

There are several different tools used in medical compliance monitoring. For instance, thermometers are used to measure room temperature and log readings in order to remain compliant and prove that everything was done correctly. Sonicu offers solutions to help businesses with compliance monitoring, providing full visibility into the auditing process. 

The platform has kits for temperature monitoring, ambient temperature and humidity, sound monitoring, differential air pressure, vaccine temperature monitoring, and more. Sonicu’s kits come with a Duo wireless meter that supports easy wireless configuration, as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G and 5G capabilities. 

This multi-connectivity approach ensures robust redundancy to ensure you’re connected to your assets even if the Wi-Fi goes out or the Bluetooth connection falters. 

The room air pressure kits automatically track pressure data around the clock to make sure that your desired air pressure is achieved at all times, even if you’re away from the facility. These kits are great for hospitals, surgeries, data centers, and more. Likewise, Sonicu’s vaccine monitoring solutions automatically monitor environmental conditions and send alert notifications in the event that something goes wrong. 

Sonicu’s solutions are perfect for hospitals and other healthcare facilities that want to ensure compliance. Staying on top of everything can be stressful, but with the right tools and solutions, you can ensure that your facility remains compliant, even when you’re working off-site and are unable to check everything by hand.

Many of our clients say reducing manual logging allows them to save a significant amount of labor costs and, more importantly, frees up their staff to focus on higher value activities like patient care. 

What is Compliance Monitoring?

So what is compliance monitoring, what is the purpose of compliance monitoring, and why is compliance monitoring important? Compliance monitoring is the process of ensuring that businesses are compliant with industry standards. In the healthcare space, this often involves the evaluation of internal controls and other metrics related to room temperature, air pressure, and cleanliness. Certain medical items, such as vaccines, need to be stored under specific environmental conditions, so it’s important that facilities remain compliant with these standards at all times to keep products safe and functional. 

There are many different compliance monitoring examples, each of which is related to different aspects of healthcare. For example, maintaining the right air pressure in a room is crucial to protecting staff and patient health. Findings from compliance audits are often compiled into compliance monitoring reports. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published extensive guidelines for healthcare facility professionals that outline its standards for air pressure differential and other ventilation issues. 

A compliance monitoring report details the extent to which a facility maintains compliance with industry standards. It might also offer suggestions for improvement. Understanding each aspect of compliance can help you stay on top of things and ensure that your facility maintains proper storage, cleanliness, and prioritizes the safety of patients and staff alike. Regularly monitoring your site for compliance is the first step in identifying errors and finding solutions to get back on track.

Whatever compliance monitoring methodology you follow, it’s important to consider all aspects of your compliance process. Your facility should have policies and protocols for maintaining equipment safety and ensuring proper room conditions. 

Adhere to those guidelines at all times and be aware of how to respond to situations in which certain standards are slipping. For instance, if the power were to go out while you were off-site, would you know how to respond appropriately to get things up and running as quickly as possible? 

Having a plan in place can help you prevent and resolve issues. 

You can learn more about how our software helps compliance professionals in these case studies: 

Xytex Sperm Bank 

Problem: Too many false alarms on cryo monitoring lead to ignoring an alarm 

Solution: Smart alarms that don’t produce alert fatigue 

Ohio University

Problem: Cumbersome and costly legacy monitoring with difficult customer service

Solution: Simple and affordable solution with third-party sensor capabilities to drive down costs 

Hamilton County Health Department: Vaccine Protection and Compliance. 

Problem: Data loggers that lacked remote viewing capabilities and compliance automation 

Solution: Remote viewing capabilities for weekend peace of mind and simple compliance 

Compliance Monitoring Methods

There are different compliance monitoring methods, and some are more useful than others, depending on your facility and what compliance entails for your staff. Technology can be used to enhance compliance procedures and help users monitor the conditions of their working environment. Internal monitoring can be helpful for ensuring ongoing quality control. 

For ideas on how to monitor compliance with policies and procedures, you can check out a compliance monitoring plan PDF. This can serve as a rough template for how to structure your compliance program for best results. 

If you are new to compliance automation, it can be especially helpful to follow methods that have been successfully implemented by others. Our team of experienced customer success managers can share how other Sonicu customers are leveraging our technology to make regulatory compliance a snap. 

When constructing your compliance monitoring framework, there are a number of things to keep in mind. First, you should consider what you’re actually going to be monitoring. You might perform risk assessments to determine what kind of risk exists within your organization and how it can be mitigated. You might also monitor equipment quality and environmental conditions. There are various ways to monitor compliance, so you should decide what methods and strategies are going to be most helpful for your organization. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to compliance monitoring. 

Compliance monitoring tools can be incredibly helpful for your process. Sonicu offers several tools and solutions for compliance monitoring. Its sound monitoring solutions are designed to automate remote sound monitoring. 

This technology uses visual cues to alert users to any abnormal changes. It also records sound levels, eliminating the need for users to manually log data. This is a great way to remain compliant with noise regulations. 

With Sonicu you can create an environment that’s uniquely tailored to your compliance standards.

Healthcare Compliance Audit Template

A healthcare compliance audit template can help you prepare for an audit. The template might provide instructions on how to get your equipment in order, as well as what questions to ask to ensure greater adherence in the future. It might also contain a compliance audit checklist, which can help you think about some of the most important items to look for in an audit. 

Having an audit checklist for hospital settings can be particularly helpful if you’re prone to forgetting things. 

There are many types of audit tools in healthcare, including manual and automatic solutions. Automatic tools are generally preferred, as they allow users to extract the data they need without having to go through each system and record information by hand, which can be extremely time-consuming. 

Using automated tools can also help reduce errors and promote greater efficiency across the board. Auditing tools are great for getting the most out of the process and providing detailed feedback on what could be done better. They can collect specific information about specific processes and offer helpful solutions for what to do next.

Types of Audits in Healthcare

There are different types of audits in healthcare. Temperature audits, for instance, are performed to ensure that rooms maintain the correct temperature, whether for storing medical devices, vaccines, or otherwise. 

Storage audits are similar in that they monitor environmental conditions to see if certain standards and guidelines are being followed. Other examples of healthcare audits include quality improvement audits, which are designed to look for areas for quality improvement, and random audits that are performed randomly and look at everything from finances to safety compliance. 

Internal auditing takes place entirely within a facility, and an external audit is conducted by an outside party. Internal auditing is typically performed in preparation for an external audit. 

Both types of auditing can be carried out more efficiently with auditing tools such as those offered by Sonicu. Offering tools for monitoring related to temperature, room pressure, and more, Sonicu’s solutions can be a great way to ensure a smooth audit, whether you’re being audited externally or internally.

Healthcare Compliance Audits 

While healthcare compliance audits are rarely fun, they can be made easier with auditing tools. Audit tools in healthcare allow users to automate certain aspects of the auditing process and generate feedback on audit findings. You can also use a healthcare audit template to make sure you hit all required benchmarks. 

A template can be especially useful for those that lack experience with auditing in healthcare. You might also use your template to make a detailed checklist of items to be monitored in your audit. 

Compliance monitoring in healthcare can take many forms, so it’s important to determine what’s most valuable to your organization and which process is most helpful for remaining compliant with industry standards. 

Not all facilities deal with the same type of procedures and equipment, which is why you should tailor your approach to your specific business needs. There isn’t a right way or a wrong way to handle the process as long as you’re remaining compliant with policies and guidelines.

Sonicu has several solutions to help with healthcare compliance audits, including temperature monitoring tools. If your facility is responsible for storing equipment at certain temperatures, these solutions can be extremely valuable in helping you stay compliant. 

With Sonicu you can protect your vaccines and medications, blood supplies, research samples, and more, ensuring that your most valuable assets remain secure, even in the event of a power outage. What’s more, you get detailed reports informing you of changes in the system. 

This can help you stay on top of your room temperature, even when you’re working off-site.

You can learn more about how our software helps compliance professionals in these case studies: 

Hancock Regional Hospital 

Problem: Pharmacy Suffered Too Much Humidity In New Wing, impacting Compounding Pharmacy

Solution: Affordable Humidity Monitoring that Delivered Powerful data to prompt contractors to fix improperly sized air handler 

Hendricks Hospital 

Problem: Dining department struck with regulatory violations 

Solution: Enterprise-wide monitoring that automates regulatory compliance across all departments 

Exide Technologies

Problem: Release of lead particles in battery projects 

Solution: Mobile, affordable air pressure monitoring solution 

Far more than just compliance: Your Peace of Mind 

Our software will certainly help automate your compliance, whether it’s with your state level board of pharmacy, your local health department or the Joint Commission. Many of our customers rely on Sonicu to keep auditors and inspectors from the CDC and Federal Drug Administration satisfied while others work with our team to build bespoke reports that meet a specific regulatory requirement. 

But Sonicu has grown to serve more than 500 customers because we deliver far more than compliance monitoring for our customers. 

Hospitals, research centers, universities and food service facility professionals turn to Sonicu and stay with us for years because we take the stress out of monitoring temperamental refrigerators and freezers with our desktop and mobile app applications. 

And we allow staff to slash the time they spend on manual logging and re-allocate that time to patient care or other high value activities. 

When Sonicu customers combine these three areas - asset protection, operational efficiency and compliance automation - they often realize the investment in Sonicu can pay for itself and deliver the sort of peace of mind that only comes with robust redundancy and Amazon Web service cloud security and flexibility.