Episode 9 - Tara’s recap of the 2025 Healthcare Compliance Association (HCCA) Annual Conference

 Join us to hear my takeaways from this year's Healthcare Compliance Association's annual conference.

Welcome to Redefining Health Law, brought to you by the law firm of Parker Hudson. Rainer and Dobbs, LLP, a boutique law firm with offices in Atlanta, Chicago, and Tallahassee. Your host for this podcast is Tara Ravi, a healthcare partner with prior work experience in both clinical research and patient care delivery. She is an adjunct professor at the Emory School of Law where she teaches corporate health law. Tara leverages her past work experience in the healthcare industry to advise healthcare organizations facing growth related challenges, although Tara is a partner in the law firm of Parker Hudson. The views expressed in this podcast are Tara's personal views and not the views of the firm or any of the firm's clients, and are not intended to be legal advice. We hope you enjoy this podcast.

Welcome back to Redefining Health Law. Today actually marks the one year anniversary of the launch of this podcast, which I'm very excited to celebrate. And really it doesn't feel like it's been a year. Because of course, time flies.

I appreciate you listening to this episode. I think today's episode was intended to be a little bit different than the other ones, which I think were more legal heavy. I told you we're going to have some legal heavy episodes, some legal light. I wanted to just reflect on some amazing events I'd been to this past spring, which partly caused the delay of why we launched our episodes this year.

But the one that sticks out in mind is the Healthcare Compliance Association Annual Conference, which is an enormous event and an association that I'd been a part of since my very beginnings as a baby lawyer back at Broad and Cassel now, Nelson Mullins. I'll have to say I haven't been to this conference in the longest time in person.

I've been listening online and downloading the materials afterwards, and part of that was just kind of life events happening two children and a job change. But the other part is, to be honest, sometimes going to conferences, and this is maybe to my junior attorneys or anybody in the healthcare field, but a conference can be a little bit daunting, even for perhaps an extrovert like me.

And I think the Healthcare Compliance Conference is probably one of the largest ones I go to each year, but also one of the less daunting ones. This episode is really to explore that. So what is the Healthcare Compliance Association annual conference? Well, the Healthcare Compliance Association is an association of compliance officers or people in the compliance field.

You'll see attorneys, compliance officers, compliance officials, vendors. It's really like a fun, exciting, happy event. I'm not really here to sell the event. I'm sure I'm not like characterizing what specifically the event and its values and core values are. But you know, for me it's always been two different types of events or like main conferences that the attorneys go to, and one is the healthcare lawyers events and your local bar events.

And this one is more for the compliance officers and it focuses on reimbursement, compliance, legal issues. And I, like I said, I hadn't been to this event and honestly it was 10 years I hadn't been to this event, and it, the last time I had gone was 2015, and it was at the same location at the Aria in Las Vegas, which to me, a Las Vegas conference is probably one of the most daunting because it's just big and there tends to be double the amount of people when you're in Vegas and you're trying to find things to do after between and in the middle of the conference. So it's just generally overwhelming and I was having a little bit of anxiety about going to it, but I just wanted to bring this episode up, or at least talk about it in this episode about what an amazing time I had when I went there. It was, it was like, like a coming of age for me. It was just, not only did I feel so comfortable in my skin and, and I was able to talk to like anybody about topics that had come up or people that I had met, and to some extent it felt like a reunion as opposed to my experiences before. I would say probably before I was focused on learning the materials and downloading all of the information and making sure I didn't miss anything and collecting business cards from prospective mentors, but now it's. It was interesting because I went and I was watching like my friends give their presentations. I was reconnecting with colleagues I hadn't seen in many years. It was almost like a homecoming, which is why this particular event has stuck in my brain through all of the other networking events that we've been to.

So I think other than just talking about my experience there, but also if you're a junior attorney compliance officer or just someone in the healthcare field, this is an amazing way to start. My sister, like I said, she just graduated from medical school. I think she should go to this because the programming is amazing.

It's five days of programming that you're going to find something for everyone within like the blocks of hours that are there. It's an incredible learning event.

Okay, so what are some of my takeaways? Well, one HCCA delivers every year, I mean, it's just so on topic of the information that people will need to know, and there's many, many opportunities. Even if you have to take a phone call or miss an hour here and there to catch up on anything you need to know, and networking is priceless. Of course. And this year, actually, they had a pretty interesting event. It was called Speed Dating, so speed networking, which I think was very fun to just quickly meet someone, have some lunch.

Okay, so what of the many, many panels did I find particularly interesting? Well, you know, the last episode was about 340 B, the 340 B program, and that was one of the first ones delivered at the program, and the speakers were amazing. It was precisely what I wanted to hear. There's so many changes happening in 340 B, so it was a good primer because like I said, even in that last episode, I'm giving a very high level of 340 B, but you could get down into the trenches for your entire career.

Of course, big topic. We're going to be rolling out some more episodes on this topic as well, but AI compliance and AI governance, even in the compliance officer round tables, which is. It's supposed to be a little bit more casual, but of course they're very, very well attended because people want to know what is top of mind, what's keeping you awake at night?

But AI, that's what's keeping my people awake at night. That's what's top of mind and, and all of the compliance and governance and figuring out how to, not only what are the right products, but what is the right way to vet out these products. And I thought it was particularly interesting because I have a little theory, that the panel or one of the main panels on AI was delivered by, I believe it was two attorneys, but also private equity because there's some element of AI is great. There's, in my opinion, two categories of AI, administrative AI, like ambient listening, which helps with the administrative burden to deliver healthcare.

And then also like clinical AI, which can be used to develop better clinical outcomes for patients. But, it seems like the burden of ensuring that all of these versions of AI, particularly the clinical AI, is almost so burdensome, that it's easier for perhaps private equity acquirers of healthcare groups to deal with or address or vet out, than the groups themselves. And so I'm always looking at trends and driving consolidation for healthcare practices, healthcare systems, and it just seems like AI, particularly clinical AI, may be something that allows PE to have another tool in its arsenal to be able to go out and be able to consolidate more healthcare, particularly among physician practice acquisitions.

So we'll see that's kind of theoretical, but I think it was somewhat interesting to me that we did have a private equity speaker at one of the AI panels discussing this. Of course then there is my panel with my amazing guest speaker, Roshunda Drummond-Dye, who is the VP of Compliance at Wellstar Health System and the Chief Privacy Officer. We presented on herding cats coordinating across departments to monitor provider-based reimbursement compliance. In hindsight, I guess it could have come up with like a pitcher, pithier, shorter to the point title, but herding cats worked there was a lot of great pictures in the PowerPoint. In any case, it was much more well attended than I thought it was going to be and I really appreciated the takeaways from many of the compliance professionals who attended, which was this big question of, you know, we're focusing on compliance issues, but really we're also thinking through organizational integration issues across what are fast growing organizations, and of course these are topics that I've spoken about before in last episodes, but I had several people come up to us and ask, you know, they see an organizational issue in their health system, but they're just in compliance and who do they speak to, reach out to? What group do they need to coordinate to try and set up work groups or more strategic coordinated calls across these departments. Whose job is it? Is it legals? Is it operations? Is it compliance? How do you start, if you identify a problem like, hey, we think there is, you know, it's not necessarily a compliance thing, it's kind of the operational efficiencies we've identified an operational inefficiency. Where do we take that to, to start organizing across departments to ensure that we can now have weekly calls, let's say, to discuss this inefficiency. So, I mean, I thought that was interesting compliance has a tendency to identify these issues more, but they're, that's not really their role to create operational efficiencies.

But I think as we see systems get larger and larger, sometimes that could potentially become their role as if they need anything more on their plate or than anybody else does either. There was another panel I thought that was very similar to this topic, which I really enjoyed, it was called Health System Growth, requires Compliance, function Growth, and it discussed integration of compliance programs across acquisitions, which I find to be very relevant now and I'll say that guest speaker since I'm specifically talking about this, it was Ted Case and Mark Jenkins. So, their panel discussed just wonky acquisitions you know, one hospital system buying either a distress system or perhaps it was an academic medical center acquiring another center. Maybe it was a nonprofit and a profit and what do you do when you've got active CIAs or active issues and how do you integrate across compliance functions, which I think is very, very important and it was just a fantastic topic. So, that's one of the panels I would suggest if you go into the HCCA website and you want to, download one off panels, and that was a great one.

It brings me to a topic that I've been just thinking about lately, which is, you know, I'm always talking about healthcare, consolidations, acquisitions. You're thinking through health systems that are growing across states that are growing across regions. Some of them have grown across the nation, and what makes a great from a consumer side, what makes a great integration? Right? Like I do think I am a proponent of health systems growing. I haven't quite decided on a personal level what I think like the right size is. I'm not sure, but what I do know is it's very difficult to expand across areas even within the state and not take the time to fully understand that local community.

I mean, like Georgia's a very good example, you know, always committed to improving our healthcare ranking but you know, Atlanta number one is very, very different from all the other major cities in the state. The rural areas are very different from those areas. Rural areas and North Georgia can be very different from rural areas and South Georgia its different from middle Georgia. So our state's just very unique across all its corners and you could be a health system that has hospitals in every single part of that state, and you will need to take time, at least it's my opinion, but you'll need to take time to really understand that community, really understand those physicians, really understand the needs of that community.

And it can't just be, as much as I'm a proponent for consolidation and integration, it can't just be consolidation for consolidation's sake to get bigger, for the sake of getting bigger. It has to be getting bigger and really understanding the unique needs of those communities and the systems that truly can do that and can do that efficiently and intentionally I think those are going to be the most successful systems and those are the ones we should learn from. I don't necessarily know from top of head the ones that I would say, but those, I'd love to see a panel on that I don't know. You know, where would that panel be? Right? Is that like an HCCA panel? Is that an American Health Lawyers Health Law Association panel? Is that just like me talking on this podcast? Probably, but we, we do see a lot of consolidations and we see a lot of out-of-state consolidations too, and it's interesting to see, you know, can a system from Alabama really understand? Well it’s like a Georgia, even though they sit on the same border, who, who knows? And, and if you're a guest that has an opinion on this, I would really love for you to write in and let me know, because you know, I'm all for, like I said, consolidations expansion. But it should be very thoughtful to the community at hand and what that existing culture or even space is like, and it's not the same just because it's one county over.

Okay, so back to HCCA. I think those are kind of all of my takeaways. I personally, I was sitting in kind of the pharmacy panels, certainly some of the AI panels, all of the compliance officers round table discussion panels, which talked a lot about AI. They had some representatives from the government CMS come and talk about what are the new initiatives going to be. Again, we're hearing AI in those initiatives. So with that said, our next couple episodes are all going to be about AI and we're going to have some really amazing AI guests and they can just answer about what is AI in healthcare. Like I said, we've got some administrative AI, we've got clinical AI, we've got. Just stuff you can do with Chat GPT to make your own personal life more efficient and then you can focus more on your job, which may be a compliance officer, may be a doctor, so. Thanks again for listening to Redefining Health Law.

If you haven't already, I invite you to subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you won't miss an episode. And of course, if you have any topics you'd like to hear discussed, please don't hesitate to email us at redefininghealthlaw@phrd.com. We'd love to hear from you.

Happy anniversary to us one year, and thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Tara Ravi.