A practical guide to healthcare policy
In this blog post, we’ll outline a practical guide to mapping your health policy landscape and understanding how you can better coordinate policy agendas to meet goals and stay in compliance with federal statutes and regulations.
Mapping and updating regulations across the state and federal policy landscape is a never-ending exercise for health agencies. Between regulations, interpretative statements and guidance documents, it’s all too easy to get lost in the paper trail of what policies are currently in effect, and which ones are no longer enforceable. Because federal funding is often tied to state agency compliance with policies, staying on top of policy development is a critical priority for healthcare agencies.
Esper is proud to serve federal and state health agencies across the U.S., including the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Washington State Department of Health and Tennessee Department of Health. We know firsthand that agencies prioritize the most up to date information on policy and are often liable for making sure their policies are as effective as federal standards.
In this blog post, we’ll outline a practical guide to mapping your health policy landscape and understanding how you can better coordinate policy agendas to meet goals and stay in compliance with federal statutes and regulations.
Take stock of your currently effective policies
Is there duplicity or redundancy in your policy? Does your policy contain outdated references or language?
- Esper’s dashboard gives you a visual representation of your policies and flags areas where you might need to review closer
- For example, this health care agency has two nearly identical regulations that could be consolidated into a single policy
Identify relevant federal mandates for healthcare policy
- Esper automatically detects references to federal and state regulations and statutes. Our technology flags references that have been repealed or updated more recently than your own policy, indicating need for closer review
- If there’s a new proposed regulation that impacts your agency, Esper will bring it to your attention
Explore best practices and new models from other governments
Is your agency regulating a new industry or updating outdated policies? Check out what other states are doing using Esper’s similar regulations feature.
- We’ll help you narrow in on relevant policies and save ones of interest to your own program with easy bookmarking
- You can also share policies with colleagues in your area of practice to compare notes
Establish alerts for healthcare policy changes
- When you identify policies of interest to your agency, you can subscribe and be alerted if there are new developments or changes to them
- For example, if you’re following a federal Medicaid regulation closely, you’ll be notified if anything changes so your agency can prepare
Begin building your healthcare policy agenda with easy reference to research and policies within Esper
- After researching and mapping your policy landscape against other federal and state agencies, easily start drafting new policy with Esper’s Policy Builder. You can collaborate with colleagues, save and revert to different versions and establish a chain of command for internal approvals
Syndicate to internal and external stakeholders
- We often hear that most agencies lack a single source of truth for up to date and past versions of policies. It can create a lot of administrative overhead and leave the agency on shaky ground when there are personnel changes
- Minimize the risk in losing institutional knowledge by saving and syndicating policies in Esper’s Policy Library. Better still, you have easy access to past versions of policies for future policy decisions
ABOUT ESPER
Esper’s suite of modern workflow and policy management tools are purpose-built for federal and state healthcare agencies across the United States. Our cloud-based, SaaS platform allows for data-driven research, collaborative policymaking and public-facing engagement on the policies that impact citizens and employees.
Interested in a complimentary assessment of your agency’s policy in Esper? Book time with one of our trusted government experts here.
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