Hospital audit

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The hospital audit is the internal audit of a hospital and supports the hospital management in their obligation to ensure the correctness of the entire business process through appropriate controls. It provides independent and objective auditing and consulting services aimed at creating added value and improving business processes.

Another task of internal auditing is to ensure that the processes are cost-effective.

Internal audit tasks in the hospital

In a modern understanding, the range of tasks of an internal audit has changed. In the past, the main activity was purely compliance audits, but modern internal auditing has taken on a wide range of tasks, including advising managers and management. Correctness - or compliance - should not be underestimated even today; But there are also completely different and no less important tasks:

  • Monitor the accountability and security of hospital assets
  • Optimizing processes in terms of costs and controls
  • Monitoring of information systems and their security
  • Monitoring the risk management system
  • Monitoring the performance of the staff in terms of quality and quantity.
  • Profitability calculations of the service-providing processes as well as other revenue areas.

Central quality criteria

An essential requirement for internal auditing is independence from the hospital's internal processes. At the same time, this means a rejection of a work model that allows audit tasks to be carried out by departments such as controlling or accounting. Independence is not to be expected here; However, independence is a key quality criterion.

An internal auditor can make objective assessments if it is not influenced in the formation of the judgment. This always applies if it is integrated into the hospital organization in such a way that it cannot be influenced in its activities by functionally responsible persons. For this reason, a classification in finance, for example, is ruled out; rather, it is advisable to report the internal auditing directly to the management.

The internal auditing takes on an essential function to support the hospital management in fulfilling the control obligation incumbent on it. In addition, internal auditing makes a significant contribution to improving competitiveness, a field of tension that this industry is exposed to due to the current change in public services of general interest and market control.

Compliance in the hospital

Corporate governance refers to a system of good corporate management that enables a company and thus also a hospital to establish a framework for its management and supervision that is appropriate for itself. Corporate compliance, on the other hand, is the duty of corporate bodies and employees to adhere to laws and internal regulations, i.e. to commit to a comprehensive principle of legality.

The design of the company's structural and procedural organization, and thus also that of the compliance organization or processes, is the responsibility of the hospital management or the board of directors. They have to be guided by general legal regulations as well as by the principles of case law so that they can meet the due diligence of a prudent businessman.

Because these due diligence obligations are often not specific enough to be able to provide real guidance in practice, a suitable compliance organization must be selected for your own company after weighing up the respective opportunities and risks.

It is important to understand that compliance is not a new, unknown buzzword in the hospital. Compliance with laws should be a matter of course, but regulations that play an important role for the well-being of patients in the context of the original service provision process of a hospital must also be observed. Beyond the legal area, there is an abundance of regulations that fulfill protective purposes.

DIIR working group

The professional association of auditors in Germany, the DIIR - German Institute for Internal Auditing - also maintains the internal auditing working group in hospitals , which is open to auditors from clinics in Germany and Austria to exchange industry-specific audit issues.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German Institute for Internal Auditing eV: Working group "Internal Auditing in Hospitals" . ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved November 18, 2014. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.diir.de