Being caught unprepared for a compliance audit can jeopardize your facility's reputation and accreditations. Stay prepared by learning how to leverage technology solutions to ensure the highest level of patient care and remain a trusted source of healthcare in your community.
Creating a safe working environment while delivering high-level patient care requires well-defined policies and procedures, clear communication and training, and precision facility monitoring. While that can be difficult to maintain alongside hectic day-to-day operations, OneVue Sense® and Primex Sync™ are valuable resources that can help you simplify accurate documentation, monitoring, and reporting on all your facility’s performance metrics to ensure you meet standards and are prepared for any compliance audit.
What is the Purpose of Healthcare Compliance Auditing?
While every facility strives to provide the best patient care, there are countless small, vital details to maintain within a busy hospital. Healthcare audits help ensure that patient care and worker safety receive the diligent monitoring they deserve. Audits provide assurance that facilities are meeting legal and regulatory requirements set for both mandatory and voluntary certification standards. While they can be complex, compliance audits can help improve patient experience and outcomes, reveal opportunities for cost savings, and identify areas for improvement in safety protocols.
How Can My Hospital Be Prepared for a Healthcare Compliance Audit?
The first focus is on knowing the standards and regulations that your facility must adhere to for proper compliance. Facilities that excel at audits select a designated team leader who demonstrates a thorough understanding of the different guidelines, as well as their purpose, intent, and the protocols fundamental to compliance.
Second, every facility should maintain a complete list of practices and protocols that fall under regulatory review, which serves as a basis for your facility's operational plan. This list can include time documentation, monitored-asset record keeping, hospital claims, and sometimes even measures for treating specific conditions.
Third, once your facility has a solid grasp on all the relevant requirements, you can establish the necessary facility operations and work practices, supported by training, communication, signage, and technology to help ensure all areas and processes within your facility meet healthcare compliance.
How Can My Hospital Meet and Overcome Healthcare Compliance Challenges?
OneVue Sense and Primex Sync provide assurance that environmental monitoring and time tracking rules and regulations are within regulatory requirements and guidelines.
Healthcare facility regulatory requirements can include automating temperature monitoring, maintaining areas of negative or positive air pressure, and tracking time metrics, like time-to-treatment data. Below are a few compliance audit situations where OneVue Sense and Primex Sync shine.
Managing Vaccine Storage Protocols with Primex
The Vaccine Storage and Handling Toolkit by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines strict availability, access, education, scheduling, storage, and record-keeping protocols. A comprehensive monitoring system is necessary for a healthcare facility to assist caregivers and provide easily retrievable reports that verify proper storage conditions, like temperature, personnel access, and alert resolution tracking. OneVue Sense Temperature Monitoring affords the tools needed to maintain compliance with vaccine management as set by the CDC and meet requirements to qualify for the Vaccines for Children program.
Users can set customized temperature thresholds and receive alerts via text message, phone call, or email if their OneVue Sense solution detects an out-of-range measurement. This early alerting can enact correct action that prevents excessive monetary losses and helps ensure the efficacy of vaccine supplies. During an audit, OneVue Sense users can utilize the mobile-friendly OneVue® software platform to generate records that prove their assets are monitored according to regulations.
Using Primex for Monitoring Medications at Receiving, Compounding, and Storing
Standards like the USP <800> Hazardous Drugs – Handling in Healthcare Settings outline that hazardous drugs must be received in a neutral or negative pressure room and stored in a negative pressure room for proper compliance. Similar restrictions often apply to rooms where medications are prepared and distributed. Monitoring these environmental conditions is necessary to meet the requirements for compliance.
The OneVue Sense Differential Pressure Monitoring solution monitors, documents, and reports on the positive and negative air pressure of rooms or storage areas designated for safe medication handling and control. Even with minimal airflow, these easy-to-install solutions detect minuscule changes in air pressure and alert the responsible staff through text, phone, or email. The solution also continuously captures pressurization data and allows users access to their readings anytime, anywhere through the web-based OneVue platform, which can be pulled up effortlessly to prove compliance during audits.
Tracking Necessary Timed Events with Primex
Time tracking is a crucial element of patient care, staff safety, and audit compliance. When a code blue is called, for example, the time of day needs to be recorded along with the time between code blue activation and the arrival of the emergency response team. Seconds matter between arrival time and treatment; accurate times can make a difference in life or death. During an audit, regulatory agencies will look to ensure your facility is accurately documenting each of these metrics.
Facilitywide synchronized clocks from a Primex Sync solution eliminate time discrepancies when noting the time of day by ensuring every clock always reads the same time. A Primex Notify Elapsed Timer simplifies time tracking by automatically documenting when a code blue is activated, how long it’s activated, and when it’s stopped. It also ensures maximum visibility for staff during an often hectic moment. During an audit, OneVue users can generate on-demand reports within the web-based software platform to prove accurate code blue time documentation.
Take Control of Audits with OneVue Sense and Primex Sync
With OneVue Sense, Primex Sync, and Primex Notify solutions implemented, facility team leaders tasked with maintaining healthcare compliance can confidently prepare for auditing agency visits. Automated environmental monitoring solutions, facilitywide synchronized time, and simple event tracking all seamlessly work together with the OneVue software platform to ensure medication, vaccine, and patient safety. Primex technology allows your team to be confident in compliance, not just for audit proof, but also for their everyday workplace effectiveness and safety.
Contact us today to properly prepare your facility for any audit situation.
Originally written and posted in September of 2020, this blog has been updated in August of 2025 to reflect current times and relevant information.
