Large for profit hospital network with 67 hospitals engaged in research activities.

The result was corporate policies to provide for Medicare Coverage Analysis support, Fair-Market Value contracts for participating physicians, and Claims system input/edit checks.
Project
Participating network hospitals exhibited a highly variable level of research skill sets and scale by facility. Objective headed a long-term task force with key participants from representative sites. The output of the team was a set of research template policies agreed upon standards, to be deployed across the network that allowed for some site customization. The result was corporate policies to provide for Medicare Coverage Analysis support, Fair-Market Value contracts for participating physicians, and Claims system input/edit checks. These all together support Legal, Compliance and Revenue Cycle Departments.
Solution
Objective staff deliverables included:
- To establish a centralized IRB, we conducted RFI/RFP phases with review and scoring that led to a provider selection that met key executive level objectives. The goal was to eliminate the numerous one-off site level IRBs and to move to one best in class system-wide IRB for research. We also helped with implementation strategy, planning and communications.
- We assisted in a regulatory database implementation and associated training plans.
- Our IT staff developed a System-wide Clinical Trials Management System (CTMS) “light” implementation – custom solution for financial tracking of clinical research activities billing and calendar of events (Microsoft CRM platform custom solution).
- We helped to revise their Comprehensive Billing Compliance Policies
- Template Operating Policies and Procedures that each facility could customize with agreed upon minimum standards for regulatory compliance
- We prepared Template Research Job Descriptions (that were then harmonized across their network).