Disclaimer: Taino Consultants Inc. is not a legal firm, the information provided herein is simply an opinion and the same should not be considered legal advice.

If you are still reading, then you should be able to get the gist of our topic. Our point is that all healthcare Providers and Organizations must be careful of what they do or risk facing fines, sanctions and even prosecution by the law. It doesn’t matter that some of the laws conflict we are still responsible to decide what, how and why.

The problems, as we see it, is that in order to provide good patient care and conform with the compliance requirements it requires continuous experience, research and education. This is something that something organizations may be able to afford at the management level but that its costs become prohibitive at the lower levels.

Facing with this challenge, Dr. Jose Delgado from Taino Consultants and Ms. Samantha Prokop from Rezlegal came up with an idea for one of their clients. The idea was simplicity in action and it involved the creation of decision trees and scripts for their client. Decision trees are nothing new but they are seldom used in the healthcare operations environment.

The idea of a decision tree is to act like a flowchart assisting individuals with the proper course of action during their daily routine. The decision tree by itself may not suffice in terms of ensuring the right action is taken in every situation but combined with policies and procedures, scripts and training they will go a long way in terms of ensuring the proper patient care, reduction of risks and a potential defense in case you need one.

BY all means, decision trees may not be the only choice but by far we consider these to be a step in the right direction.