Features
Will a Hotline Help?
The third rung of the ROPE Ladder for compliance success focuses on discovering and fixing problems. One effective mechanism for learning of problems is a telephone hotline.
The use of hotlines has grown because personnel who spot problems need to have a safe and effective way to report them to their bosses. Whether it is known as an employee information line, a compliance hotline or by some other name, the concept is now part of the corporate landscape.
Through the 1980s, the hotline concept was embraced by industries including defense contracting, banking, transportation, financial services and telecommunications. The fact that hotlines are only now becoming more common in the health care industry is somewhat of an anomaly. It is difficult to speculate as to why our industry has been slower to embrace this concept — it certainly is not because of lax government regulation!
Fortunately, home care companies can learn from the positive and negative hotline experiences of these other industries:
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Personnel use hotlines to report both actual and perceived problems. Not every tip is “hot,” but every tip must be evaluated.
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Hotline phone calls disproportionately involve human resources issues — regardless of why the hotline was created — regarding discrimination, sexual harassment, wrongful discharge, etc., additional to whatever violations of law, regulation or ethical codes are raised.
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The issues that come to management through hotlines are, on average, more sensitive than complaints that move through regular channels.
If handled correctly, a hotline can offer positive benefits to a home care company. At a minimum, a hotline provides an avenue for information to flow, identifying concerns that warrant attention. In addition, because the hotline encourages reports that are more sensitive than those that typically pass through regular channels of communication, it tends to identify problems that are not promptly or fully disclosed through regular channels.
