A growing profile for the hospital's chief compliance officer

Seismic changes altering the healthcare industry are placing financial pressures on hospitals and health systems, and creating an increasing number of compliance requirements for providers to meet.

This means a larger role for a healthcare organization's chief compliance officer (CCO), according to Gerald Stone, national leader for compliance services within PwC's Performance Governance Risk and Compliance practice.

"There's a real opportunity for compliance officers to partner with CFOs and others in charge of strategy, to sit at the table and help organizations evolve," Stone said.

Changes wrought by the Affordable Care Act and other laws are forcing healthcare organizations to diversify as a way to provide services to more members of the community and generate additional revenue.

"As health systems face a growing set of regulations to live by, as payers and providers come together, and as clinically integrated networks evolve, there's an expansion of the footprint of the health system, and that means an expansion of the compliance obligations," Stone said. "As organizations diversify, we see a trend that more expectations are being put on the CCO to alert the organization to new risks and regulations."

[See also: CFOs must 'rev' up for 2014.]

Fortunately, the vast majority of healthcare organizations – 86 percent – have CCOs, according to PwC's State of Compliance 2014 Survey.

Unfortunately, given the growing number of compliance requirements, that number is down from 94 percent in 2013.

The struggle for CCOs to gain influence in an organization, the PwC compliance survey summary notes, is rooted in "the perception – and, frankly, the reality – that typically, the compliance function is not revenue producing."

Nonetheless, Stone said, "There are a number of things a compliance office is responsible for that are really relevant to a hospital CFO."

"CFOs find themselves under reimbursement pressure because the healthcare regulatory landscape has put reimbursement pressure on healthcare organizations," said Stone. "That causes organizations to look for new relationships, new ways to diversify to meet the financial needs of the healthcare organization. And compliance issues come up in those expanded business models."

Because of this emerging dynamic, Stone said, "CCOs really can be an invaluable partner to the CFO like never before."

Another area in which a CCO can impact the performance of a healthcare organization is by ensuring compliance with regulations to protect patient records, Stone says.

"Privacy and confidentiality are core to the integrity of a healthcare organization," he said.

[See also: Strategic concerns drive healthcare M&A.]

Even though CCOs have no revenue-generating responsibilities, Stone said, they perform a valuable function in that area.

"Many of the industry-specific regulations promulgated by federal and state regulators affect reimbursement," he said. "Medicare regulations from CMS govern how you can bill and collect, what services you can bill and collect for, and what types of relationships you can have with physicians."

Stone says that while the role of CCO is not new, it is evolving to meet the shifting healthcare landscape.

"Best practices are emerging," he said.