Whether you are reviewing your annual work plan, identifying personal development goals, or assessing the capabilities of your team, consider including an objective for strengthening project management skills. Complementary to technical compliance skills and knowledge, project management is the practical “how” to get things done and can prove equally important. Intentional or not, compliance professionals are often de facto project managers in the work we do for our organizations. While there is no defined “right way” to manage a project, your compliance program and team will improve the likelihood of meeting objectives on time and within budget by understanding the core project management concepts and tools.

In a recently published article in the July 2023 edition of the Health Care Compliance Association's (HCCA) monthly periodical Compliance Today, Dhara Satija, Healthcare Consulting Leader at Paul Hastings LLP, Caitlin Holleran, Vice President of Compliance Integrity Services/Chief Compliance Officer at Sharp HealthCare, and Kaitlin McCarthy, Associate Deputy Compliance Officer at Beth Israel Lahey Health provide an overview of the project management roles, responsibilities, tools, best practices and common pitfalls. The authors highlight the importance of understanding and applying basic project management skills to drive attainment of project goals whether compliance is in a leading or supporting role.

Takeaways

• Project management provides project team stakeholders with clearly defined objectives, goals, roles, and responsibilities.
• Understanding your role on a project can increase the value of your participation in the project.
• By facilitating communication and logging issues, risks, and actionable items, project teams can increase stakeholder engagement and support.
• Dedicated project software is not required to develop tools such as a status report, risk and issue log, communication plan, and project timeline/milestone tracker.
• Applying scaled project management principles will enable you and your team to effectively utilize time and resources to achieve your project objectives.

This article was originally published in Compliance Cosmos. © July 2023 Compliance Today, a publication of the Health Care Compliance Association (HCCA).

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