Archived Publications 5 Reasons - An Interview with Sheryl Vacca | Page 3

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Unexpected Partnerships Are Forming
“If you pay attention nationally, you will see
mergers and acquisitions occurring with partners
that we would never have expected to be
partners in healthcare,” Vacca says. Companies
like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have
decided to branch out from the tech world and
enter into healthcare. These companies may not
have a clearly defined focus yet, but they have
made it known that healthcare is an area they
plan to partner in.
With these new partnerships, healthcare
organizations now have new contractual
obligations that they need to accommodate, and
they have acquired different revenue streams
from businesses that would not necessarily be
perceived as healthcare companies. Vacca
explains how this can get complicated from a
compliance perspective, “From here, our
compliance rules and regulations wind up
expanding into fields other than healthcare. This
can be another regulatory arm or another
related requirement, and we have to be aware of
where that’s going. As you’re looking at these
different contractual arrangements and working
in different capacities with these unexpected
partners, you have to decide how this might
affect you from a regulatory perspective and be
prepared to adapt.”
Vacca states that as a compliance officer, she is
constantly looking at different governance
structures so that her organization can be
outside the walls of the stringent requirements
that they have in the hospital setting and with
the care that needs to be provided there. She
emphasizes, “We’re always looking for ways to
structure ourselves that will allow us the
freedom to do what needs to be done to thrive
as an organization in the future.”
“Our compliance rules and regulations wind up expanding into
fields other than healthcare. This can be another regulatory arm or
another related requirement, and we have to be aware of where
that’s going. As you’re looking at these different contractual
arrangements and working in different capacities with these
unexpected partners, you have to decide how this might affect you
from a regulatory perspective and be prepared to adapt.”