Contract Management Software for the Healthcare Industry

While virtually any organization can benefit from Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software, organizations that operate within the healthcare industry face especially stringent requirements that make it all the more important to streamline, automate, and scale their contract management functions. In doing so, healthcare organizations can manage risk more effectively, simplify compliance, reduce complexity, and increase efficiency.

Organizations that operate within the healthcare sector must adhere to a raft of compliance standards and strict criteria for safeguarding the privacy and security of patients’ protected health information (PHI). Healthcare providers face a dizzying array of regulations such as HIPAA, the HITECH Act, Stark laws, and more. Many of the organizations that serve patients indirectly are similarly subject to strict oversight.

To stay in the good graces of regulators and avoid legal liability, organizations that operate in the healthcare industry must take great care to ensure that legal agreements and acknowledgments are in perfect order. Healthcare contract management software offers distinct advantages for those organizations, helping to manage risk effectively, reduce complexity, and maintain full compliance with the law.

Healthcare contract management best practices

The vast majority of organizations that operate in the healthcare sector must be capable of managing high volumes of legal agreements that are subject to frequent change. For those who serve patients directly,  that means dealing with an array of different stakeholders, including parents and guardians, healthcare proxies and powers-of-attorney, other providers, and of course the patients themselves.

To manage that kind of complexity, healthcare organizations should consider implementing the following best practices:

• Systematize your contractual processes. By defining clear, detailed processes, you can ensure that all necessary legal agreements are in place, for every patient and every relationship. Mapping out the array of agreements you will need to accommodate various scenarios will take some time and effort,  but it’s well worth it. By planning and organizing contractual processes upfront, you can save yourself and the rest of your organization a lot of potential headaches down the road.
• Use technology to your advantage. Unfortunately, those contractual processes can often be complicated. To simplify and streamline your management of legal agreements, consider deploying technology that uses automated workflows. Automation can take much of the burdensome effort out of your day-to-day processes. Perhaps more importantly, it ensures that nothing slips through the cracks. When something requires attention, a good healthcare contract management solution will notify the right person at exactly the right time. Ultimately, that saves considerable time and money.
• Implement role-based security. To maintain compliance with HIPAA’s Privacy Rule and similar regulations, healthcare organizations must limit access to protected health information based on a need to know. Role-based security makes it easy to manage user permissions accurately and efficiently. This will make your HIPAA compliance officer’s job substantially easier.

Healthcare contract management software simplifies the management of legal agreements across your organization. Here are some of the specific benefits for organizations that operate in the healthcare and life sciences industries:

Healthcare contract management software simplifies the management of legal agreements across your organization. Here are some of the specific benefits for organizations that operate in the healthcare and life sciences industries:

Minimize risks

The vast majority of relationships with patients, providers, or other healthcare organizations will proceed without any legal complications. Nevertheless, for the few that might turn out to be problematic, it’s critical to have sound contractual agreements in place. That means keeping up with changing legal requirements as well as changes to stakeholder relationships.

Healthcare contract management software provides an automated mechanism for ensuring that the right legal agreements are executed at the right time, every time. Workflows ensure that whenever action may be required, the right people are promptly notified. When a patient reaches the age of majority, for example, healthcare providers may need to execute new agreements based on that person’s change in legal status. Automation ensures that nothing slips through the cracks.

Maintain compliance

Powerful CLM reporting capabilities give healthcare organizations a leg up in compliance, speeding access to information and simplifying regulatory requests for information.

An ever-changing array of complex federal and state regulations also presents a challenge; your organization must keep its legal agreements up to date to reflect an evolving compliance landscape. Healthcare contract management software makes it easy to update templates, and can trigger automatic notifications when a new requirement goes into effect. Updates to a patient consent agreement, for example, may call for a signature at the beginning of a person’s next appointment. Healthcare contract management software automates processes to help healthcare organizations remain in compliance at all times.

Manage contracts efficiently

Templated contracts are common in the healthcare sector, especially in high-volume scenarios. Healthcare contract management software enables your organization to create and update those contracts quickly and easily using standard clause libraries.

For more complex, lower-volume legal agreements, it’s common for healthcare organizations to employ the services of a dedicated contract manager whose job includes tracking the status of agreements and taking appropriate action when necessary. The best healthcare contract management software simplifies the contract management function by providing valuable insights via contract analytics, and streamlining the organization of important tasks. Healthcare contract management software also simplifies access to information; instead of digging through file cabinets in search of paper documents, users can locate the information they need in just seconds.

Address complexity

Organizations that operate in the healthcare industry must accommodate a range of different variables in their legal agreements. It may be necessary to adapt contractual language to address differences in state law, for example, or to modify the content of an agreement to reflect a patient’s legal status. Regulatory changes may call for additional modifications, often requiring stakeholders to execute a new, updated version of the contract.

Creating and managing legal agreements within a constantly changing environment can be overwhelming. Healthcare contract management software reduces complexity throughout the entire contract lifecycle.

Conclusion

Icertis Contract Intelligence (ICI) is an ideal solution for healthcare providers, payers, life sciences firms, pharmaceutical companies, and biotechnology organizations. Icertis has been serving organizations in the healthcare and life sciences space for well over a decade. We understand that it takes an ecosystem of partners to deliver top-notch care for patients. Contracts guide those ecosystem and patient relationships, and ICI optimizes those agreements, every step of the way.

To learn more about Icertis Contract Intelligence for healthcare and life sciences, contact us to discuss your organization’s unique needs.