October 20, 2025 • 33 mins
In this premiere episode of the Compliant AF Podcast, hosts Amy Wood and Kara Kelley finally hit record on the conversations they’ve been having for years - about healthcare compliance, the dumpster fires they’ve helped put out, and why "check-the-box" compliance just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Get to know your hosts as they share the origin stories behind their weirdly specific careers in HIPAA/cybersecurity and HR - Amy, as the CEO of Copper Penny Consulting LLC, and Kara Kelley, as the CEO of Clinical HR LLC - and why they're on a mission to help dental and healthcare practice leaders lead with compliance, not fear.
They discuss:
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Why most practices don’t take compliance seriously - until it’s too late
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The difference between being compliant on paper vs. in practice
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The actual costs of being reactive vs. proactive
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What to expect from future episodes (spoiler: a lot of experts, acronyms, and snark)
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And how to build a culture that is truly Compliant AF
Whether you're a practice owner, manager, or part of a healthcare team, this episode lays the foundation for what’s coming - and why this podcast doesn’t sound like your average compliance training.
🛑 Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or regulatory advice. Kara Kelley and Amy Wood are not attorneys, and listening to this podcast does not create a client relationship with Clinical HR LLC or Copper Penny Consulting LLC. Always consult a qualified professional for advice specific to your situation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kara D Kelley (00:00):
Kara, welcome to the compliant AF Podcast where healthcare compliance isn't just a checklist, it's a competitive advantage.
Amy Wood (00:07):
I'm Amy wood, CEO of copper penny consulting, a cyber security and HIPAA compliance geek who thinks encryption is awesome.
Kara D Kelley (00:13):
And I'm Kara Kelley, CEO of clinical HR fractional HR business partner and HR nerd who is weirdly passionate about employment policy
Amy Wood (00:19):
if you're a dental or health care leader who's tired of check the box compliance and wants to actually understand what the rules are and how to build a practice that doesn't live in fear of audits or lawsuits, we
Kara D Kelley (00:30):
are in the right place. We are digging into the stuff that keeps practice leaders at night, we'll
Amy Wood (00:34):
break down the boring, call out the BS and share real strategies with a little snark and a whole lot of caffeine. This isn't legal advice. We are not your lawyers. We are two consultants who have seen way too many practices get in trouble because no one explained the rules in a way that actually made sense or made them care. But since this is a compliance
Kara D Kelley (00:50):
podcast, the content in this podcast are any associated clips for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, tax or regulatory advice. We are not attorneys clinical HR LLC and copper penny consulting LLC are not legal firms. Not legal firms, and listening to this podcast does not create a client relationship. Always consult a qualified professional
Amy Wood (01:09):
advisor for guidance specific to your situation. So buckle up, because boring compliance just got compliant.
Kara D Kelley (01:15):
AF, my goodness, I don't know why we haven't done this before. We've literally talked about this for years now, like, what are we almost in 2026
Amy Wood (01:24):
hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and late night phone calls. Of You won't believe what happened to me today. If we just
Kara D Kelley (01:32):
would have recorded the phone calls, of course, then we would have had to wonder whether or not anybody was in a single party state versus a two party state. We would have to, we'd have to get authorization,
Amy Wood (01:43):
but we have seen some stuff. Yes, we have.
Kara D Kelley (01:47):
And honestly, I think this is going to be one of my favorite parts about what we're doing here. You know, we are both very, incredibly passionate about compliance in our own right. We're both experts in our own right, and we both have all of these stories, but a lot of it just stems from people who don't care enough to do things the right way. And I feel like that is something that we hear so many complaints about. We hear so many complaints about the team members who just won't do what they're supposed to do, who aren't following the policies. But sometimes it's it's the leaders that are not setting that example of compliance, they're not helping the team see that they need to build this compliance focused culture that really, I think would drive a lot of this and solve a lot of these problems, if we all just felt like this should be a huge priority in our practices.
Amy Wood (02:36):
Wouldn't it be nice to have basically work ourselves out of a job.
Kara D Kelley (02:42):
Yeah, I don't know that there's a risk of that happening.
Amy Wood (02:49):
I would love that. It would, it would just, it would make me so happy that people were so safe within their practices and their business was solid and secure and never do
Kara D Kelley (03:03):
another data breach again.
Amy Wood (03:07):
Okay, so I'm really good at it. I know what I'm doing. I've done hundreds of these, and I've never had a fine or a patient lawsuit or anybody close their doors. But I cannot stand doing data breach investigations. They the the risk management part of that, the chaos, the eye twitching, just all of it. It's not fun for for me, and it's it's definitely not fun for the people I work with. And if we would just all be a little proactive, then we can manage those incidents when they actually happen, and
Kara D Kelley (03:41):
then you wouldn't have to have those heartbreaking conversations where you have to tell a doctor that actually you do need to write that check or wire that money because you're not getting your data back. Otherwise, yeah,
Amy Wood (03:52):
it's, it's, yeah, it's sad. So it's
Kara D Kelley (03:55):
also tripping over dollars to pick up nickels is one of my favorite expressions. I think of a lot of things that we do in dentistry, what we do in healthcare that we don't really focus on what the the true cost could be, if only, and so we don't get that extra compliance training where we make sure that our team knows not to click those links in those emails, or that we know that our team is trained on The policies that don't lead to certain types of internal investigations. We don't bother with that because we don't want to pay the couple hours of wages for them to do the training. Instead, we wait until something bad happens, and then when it does, it really happens.
Amy Wood (04:36):
It really happens. And for our listeners that have no idea who we are or what we do, this will be the only episode that we get into the nitty gritty of that we may allude to it in future episodes, but Kara and I have both been on enough podcasts as guests sharing the same why we do this story over and over and over again. Find a short. Tell us about your story.
Kara D Kelley (05:01):
How did you get started?
Amy Wood (05:06):
The short version is, I became a victim of financial and medical identity theft because my dental X rays ended up for sale on the dark web, along with my name, birth date, social security number and my insurance medical record number. I'm not worth enough, sadly, and I'm so locked down it's it's hard for things to get through, but I've had people impersonate me to try to get cell phones and SIM card swap to try to intercept my multi factor authentication codes when I was running a dental IT company, and I've had people call into my business credit card to try to get additional authorized users on my business account, and I even had someone impersonate me to try to procure medical services, and messed up my medical records so bad that I was not able to get my blood pressure medication. That's a big deal for me.
Kara D Kelley (06:06):
Little bit oh my goodness, yeah, but
Amy Wood (06:09):
took those lemons and turned it into lemonade and turned that into copper penny, and became little passionate, a little crazy and very forward thinking about compliance overall, and how the smaller markets like dental, chiropractic, ophthalmology, kind of the outliers of health care tend to look at not just HIPAA and privacy and cyber security. They're looking at all aspects of compliance with this lens of, how do I do it quick, and how do I do it cheap? And that's one of the things we talk about a lot,
Kara D Kelley (06:47):
you know, from a different perspective. Amy God, what an overreaction. She was so mad at her identity being stolen that she went and turned it into a whole freaking career.
Amy Wood (06:59):
It was, I was looking through some old stuff my parents house not too long ago, and some old report cards popped up that said She talks too much and she's bossy. And I just found a way to utilize those strengths of mine and channel it into speaking and consulting and speaking with the intent to consult and consulting with the intent to educate, and kind of vice versa.
Kara D Kelley (07:28):
So here we are. Here we are. I mean, our origin story, I had a similar where I kind of fell into it, honestly, like it wasn't an intention. Nobody grows up thinking, oh my gosh, I want to be a dental HR consultant. No, I do say I have every teenage girl's dream job that I get paid to talk so that's something. But no, I was, I was actually going to school for a marketing degree. I had been self employed in a completely different field. I was thinking that that would be something that would be useful for me, even if I never went to go work in corporate with it, and I took an HR class as part of my general business credits, and fell in love with it and switched my major. And then at the end or so of my education, it was about a year or so left, and at the time, this was like 2012 where, you know, we didn't just hire the first person who showed up on time and sober. So I was looking at my resume and going, Well, all I have is self employment for the last several years. So maybe I should go take a job doing something somewhere, and then when I finished my degree, I can go and join corporate America and work my way up the ladder and some HR department of a fortune 500 company and start as a generalist and maybe be an HR director one day. And none of that happened, because I landed at a dental CPA firm, of all things, doing marketing while I was trying to finish my degree, and as I was in some of the meetings with clients trying to learn more about what the firm did be able to do better on the marketing side and write copy that was more organic, I started asking questions, and The clients in the meetings had questions that my boss couldn't answer, and so I answered for them, because apparently I can't help myself, and I talk too much as we told
Amy Wood (09:08):
occasionally you can't help yourself trying to boss someone
Kara D Kelley (09:12):
around, I couldn't, although I did have a moment that whenever I answered one of their questions, I remember this by the way, it was about overtime. They were asking about overtime, and it wasn't a question of like, how do you pay it, or when do you pay it? It was like, how do we you know, what is the threshold of too much overtime? And so I started answering that question, because my boss had a blank look on his face. And then they turned to me and they asked me a couple of other questions, and I'm just going, oh my gosh, wait. Well, people went like, what real answers now? What is happening?
Amy Wood (09:39):
Oh, no, I just became important crap. Yes,
Kara D Kelley (09:43):
they want real, real information. Oh, my. And so I kind of did a very quick pivot into being a consultant at that point, and after I was there about seven and a half years, and kind of worked my way into becoming a business development and HR consultant, where I was doing internal HR for the firm as we grew, I did HR advisory for the clients. I wrote. Business plans with the clients and sat through some of their meetings and ended up mistaken for a CPA far too many times. I am certainly not a CPA. I really, really love HR, so I went ahead and decided to branch out on my own and start my own firm, originally for speaking, but then we had a pandemic, and so I did kind of a very quick 360 degree with more of a pirouette than a pivot, three pirouette. Right back to me a consultant in about a three week span because covid.
Amy Wood (10:28):
Now it's interesting, because I always did consulting first and speaking was a means to get people to understand why we were doing things the way we were doing them. And really it started for me as trying to educate people on why we were changing our IT business from basically a fee for service, or what we called a when something was broken, you would fix it a break fix model, and we were moving to manage services. We were having a list of security services as our our main asset that we were providing to clients, and then support was what they wanted. That was, that was the crack they wanted. But they they needed all the other things, the proactive shift. Yes, yes, a proactive shift. Those were much better words, and it took a long time because the industry as a whole didn't really care. I mean, they still struggle with that, but back then, you know, 15 years ago, they just it was you bought, you bought a DIY manual, and half of them that I saw were still in the shrink wrap in an office, and they were several years old, gathering dust on them, and I realized very quickly that it I could do what I could do in terms of it, and I could protect these people as long as I could get through to them. But there was what I was doing. Was really only about 20% of HIPAA, and the rest of it, there were a lot of people that talked about that, but then we had this weird shift in about 2007 Eight, the last time the economy stunk, and very different way, if you remember that time. But that was about also the same time that dental offices were putting they were digitizing everything. They were putting computers and operatories and digital X rays. And it was a wild time. And it was just about the time I started having dependence, when my kids started happening. You know, my oldest was born the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed, and my second was born the worst Black Friday shopping season ever in history. And so, like we, we had some rough years, but also
(12:49):
Dentistry was kind of insulated during that, and they, they were willing to embrace things that were new. But for some reason, when it comes to compliance, there's just this old ideology of, well,it's just something that, it's a checkbox we have to fix, and it doesn't really matter what is said or what we do, we just have to check the boxes. But surprisingly, I'm finding, I know you're finding this too. There are a lot of practices that actually want to do this right, and they are tired of preventable things happening, and they
Kara D Kelley (13:26):
want to get ahead of it. And I've actually had an interesting phenomena last couple of years where it's the it's the newer doctors that are buying the practices and starting the practices that have actually seen what has happened, and are listening to those stories. You've got a number of people who are coming and speaking at schools, and speaking at schools, and so they're hearing those stories whenever they're in school. They're paying attention to social media, and they actually want to do things right from the beginning. They're not just saying, Hey, I know, you know, I've got tons of student loan debt, I've got practice note that I've got to deal with, but I don't really just want the absolute cheapest I want something that really is going to work for us. And I just, Oh, those are my favorite people to work with right now.
Amy Wood (14:04):
Mine too. And you know, the interesting thing is, you have to start small with offices like that, because they tend to have a lot of turnover. They tend to have a lot of other things on their brain at that point, and you have to just follow up routinely and continue to add compliance into the overall schematics of the office, for lack of a better phrase, and those offices tend to have it together.
Kara D Kelley (14:33):
So how do we do that? How do we actually get people interested in this, and not just interested like actually wanting to be as compliant as possible, who are really putting this first, who are very passionate compliant, AF, who want to be compliant, AF who aren't, who aren't just wanting to check a box. They really, really, actually care about this. And from the perspective of not just the Practice Leader, that this is their practice, and of course, they want to protect their baby, how do you get your team members invested in. Being compliance and putting that as a first step.
Amy Wood (15:02):
Well, that's what we're going to talk about on this podcast. Every time we post something, it'll be a little bit of a different topic, and that was one of the reasons we wanted to do this podcast, was because we get pigeonholed in our respective expertise. So when people hear, HR, what do they immediately think? Kara, employee handbooks, right, and labor law disputes, yes, that's all they think
Kara D Kelley (15:29):
about. And payroll and recruiting and oh my, and headaches and people are costing me way too much money. Yes, no. HR, that's one of the things I've had to contend with. No, I think the question I was really going for is, like, how do we actually get people that interested in it? And some of it is about making it interesting, period, like making it entertaining, making it sharing the stories that we have. Got so many stories. Oh my gosh, how do we not have a book yet? Girl, I got a lot of stories podcast yet,
Amy Wood (15:55):
and we'll share what we can, what we're legally allowed to share
Kara D Kelley (16:01):
that's not currently under active litigation,
Amy Wood (16:03):
and say save those that have been accused or incriminated and generalized information
Kara D Kelley (16:12):
changing the names to protect the guilty and the innocent both. Yes,
Amy Wood (16:16):
well, I know on my end, when people hear HIPAA, they automatically think privacy, or they think cybersecurity, but there's so many little details in it. And in my business, we also do all areas of safety, compliance and regulation. We do not touch HR, we do not like there's boundaries even within what we do. And you know, we we have an expert who will periodically come on here and there, and within OSHA, which is what she does, usually, when people say OSHA, they really mean infection control, because that's the class they think they're getting. But OSHA is an entirely different topic, and I am not the expert. I do not understand any of that. Even with the infection control stuff, I get grossed out and start gagging and realize I am way better on this side of of health care. I have done my time as a nursing assistant. I do not need to go back. Sputum grosses me out. More power to you clinical people, but not my thing.
Kara D Kelley (17:18):
Hard pass. I was a Clinical Massage Therapist, and that is because I did not want to deal with needles or blood. So that was as close as I was going to get to clinical. We will let the the experts handle the expert things, and that's actually part of why we wanted to start this as well. It's not going to just be about us talking about our two respective topics. It's it's us. As we were deep diving on this, we kind of expanded the range on it. We're like, there's other topics we want to talk about. There's other topics we want people to hear that they also need to have that passion for being compliant. AF. And so we want to bring on those experts here. We want to bring on people who are really well studied in OSHA, infection control, in fraud, embezzlement, in IRS regulations, in marketing, website regulations, and ADA compliance, as far as I get, like, all of these things that, my goodness, we could have an alphabet soup of acronyms here, of all of the things that we will, oh, I'm sure we will. And like, if this is something that that, you know, we continue doing, and we want to continue putting the effort, and, my goodness, we could have years and years and years of seasons, and probably not loop the entire the same expert twice, or talk about the same topic, topic twice.
Amy Wood (18:27):
We may need to have a glossary for people to understand all the acronyms at some point
Kara D Kelley (18:32):
that is probably fair. Hopefully the experts are going to be speakers like we are, where we understand that not everybody knows the acronyms and the DOLs and fmlas and flsas and IRS is and all of the others that go along with at least my world and that they will break those things down and explain it. So that's but that's why we want them here. We want them to explain it. We don't want to
Amy Wood (18:56):
explain it. No, I I get annoyed with that. Every time I go to a meeting and I hear someone using all the acronyms, I'm like, Cool. I know that you understand that, but I need to know what you mean by that, because don't automatically, like, I'm not an expert on this yet. That's why I'm here listening to you well,
Kara D Kelley (19:15):
and it just sounds a little arrogant. Honestly, the speakers who get up there and intentionally use industry jargon, and this is across the board. This is not just in compliance. This is across the board. And health care and outside of health care. I know you take take courses in CE outside of health care, and as do I, and so we're used to hearing a lot of speakers where I'm in my world. I'm used to hearing a lot of attorneys reading off slides, and I don't know if they expect us all to know all the things that sometimes they kind of get that, that air about them of I am an expert, and I've got this ego, and you should listen to me because of that. And I think both of us really take more of an organic human lens to it, that we are more relatable in that sense, whenever we're on stage, because we actually try to put ourselves in the audience's perspective. Yeah, and it's I know whenever I listen to you speak, that's what I appreciate about you, that you are making it something that's relatable to them. And I think that's really ties back to what, what I want us to be able to do here is make compliance relatable. Make it something that is interesting, not something that is a have to do. It's a we know that this is important, and we want to do this because it matters.
Amy Wood (20:22):
I know when I get some of my feedback forms on classes, even with clients I've had for, you know, a decade or more at this point, I always get something in there that says I always learn something new from you every year. Some of it is repeat. Yeah, I can't help that. It hasn't changed in almost 30 years, but, but there's always something new, and there's a different perspective, or there's a different story, or there's something that's relatable, or it's a new topic that's popped up within this world, and
Kara D Kelley (20:56):
something you said last year that they forgot. Because unless you're doing this day every day, this isn't something that comes second nature to you,
Amy Wood (21:04):
and I will say that is a conversation you and I have had a lot where these topics are constantly evolving, and I know for me and in my business, and this podcast is not a sales pitch. We just want to clarify that right now, neither one of us is looking for new clients through this. You know, if y'all want to call us for whatever, we're fine with that. And, you know, we just want to help people stop doing preventable things. That's it. But I know, in my business, what I'm I'm doing is I'll cross over a little bit, but nobody on my team will ever be able to be an expert in any more than two topics, period. And even that's a stretch. So like I do a lot with DEA compliance, but that is not my main topic. My main topic is HIPAA and privacy and cyber security and making sure that is 100% dialed in. So when there's a problem, someone can call me, and I can be like, Oh, okay, so I've dealt with this, and we're going to do X, Y and Z and A, B, C, D, E as our alternatives. And it's like a flow chart in my brain every time I get a call. And I know that sounds nerdy, but that's really what has to happen in order to survive this stuff successfully, and that's when you have an expert that can do that. But you know, if I had five or six topics, I wouldn't be able to be an expert in that. You know, I have meetings I go to, I have groups that I'm a part of. I have certifications I have to maintain. I have my own CE I have to do to stay up on top of these things. And that's what makes an expert, not just throwing something into an AI platform and saying, Okay, I can speak on this topic. Now, I know we all have to start somewhere, but No, and that's fair.
Kara D Kelley (22:59):
I have, and I've said, similar whenever I'm doing an employee handbook engagement, for example, where there's a lot of areas that I have to touch on, or at least know a little bit about, but I will frequently tell my clients I know enough to know you need to go talk to an expert. So when we're writing their benefits policies and we're talking about insurance, and they asked me a question about 401, K's, I know enough to know you need to go to know you need to go talk to your financial planner or your CPA. We talked about health insurance. I know enough to know you need to go talk to your broker. I from what I understand, this is what XYZ might be. But I'm not the expert, and I am more than willing to admit that. And that to me, actually, I think, is one of the hallmarks of somebody who is truly within their niche and really owning their lane is that they know what they they know, but they also know what they don't know, and they're not afraid or embarrassed at all to say, I don't know the answer, but let me find that for you or I don't know the answer, and this is the person that you should go talk to.
Amy Wood (23:54):
And staying extremely well connected in this industry is a huge, huge, huge part of that. I mean, that's a big thing that I do with data breaches, with crisis management, because most of the people that come to me don't have cyber insurance, and so I'm having to kind of gather resources for them, and they don't know where to go or who to call. They're going to call someone that doesn't know what they're doing. And so that's kind of my job is to have the skill set to be able to contact the right people for the right job and refer correctly. So that's one thing I really pride myself on. Is in this industry, we know people, and we haven't turned them all off in some way or another,
Kara D Kelley (24:43):
even have agreed to be guests on this podcast.
Amy Wood (24:46):
No, I know they like us. They really like us,
Kara D Kelley (24:50):
either that or they're just about as nerdy as we are with our own little niche of top compliance. And I'm actually really looking forward to some of these conversations when we were. Coming up with this list of different categories and things that we could talk about for a season. My goodness, we ended up with something like, what, 1415, different topics, with a list of excerpts where we have at least two or three for each one of those topics. Like, Hmm, okay, well, there are going to be some episodes with with the two of us talking about our thing. But I think we could probably fill an entire season or 12, having every episode you want an expert, because we just we've been doing this for so long, and we have gotten so entrenched in this world. And not just what's funny is it's not just in like dentistry, you and I primarily work in dentistry, but we also have other other health care professions that we serve, and we have other connections that are outside of that. And so like some of the people that I really excited to bring on are people who have nothing to do with dentistry, but they're experts in their thing. One of one of the people that I will be bringing on at some point is a background check expert, like he 100% knows, like Fair Credit Reporting Act, and he deep dives on this. He goes around the country, and he speaks to other HR Association chapters and teaches other HR professionals about what you should and shouldn't do with background checks. And there's a lot of misconceptions there. And so I'm really excited to bring him on for that. But he's not somebody who works in our world. He just, he is just absolutely an expert in his and then his team, and he's one of the people that I refer to without any expectation of a kickback or anything, or based on merit, to his background check company, because I know that they are compliant as and they are the most comprehensive background checks I've seen for healthcare. So it's my
(26:33):
number one go to recommendation. And so I want to bring people like that into this world and get that expertise in front of people who could really benefit from it, in front of those leaders who mayeither not be doing background checks at all. We know that happens, never, right? Which
Amy Wood (26:49):
is why we know people that do embezzlement
Kara D Kelley (26:52):
Well, yes, and
Amy Wood (26:56):
investigations, not the actual embezzling. To clarify,
Kara D Kelley (27:01):
fair enough, yes, that's why we have those people on speed dial, yes or Facebook Messenger, as it is some days.
Amy Wood (27:08):
I mean, just even as we're talking, I'm thinking of 10 other people outside of of dentistry that I deal with. You know, I've been involved in groups where the majority of the people are in the financial sector, and they're looking at me like, why are you having the kinds of problems you're having? I'm like, because it's a smaller market, and it's 15 years behind in technology, and my job sucks some days. Okay, that's just it
Kara D Kelley (27:39):
well. And in fairness, like by the time doctors make it through school, by the time they get into the workforce, by the time they start their practices, they are inundated with compliance. They have their dental or medical board compliance, then they have HIPAA, and then they have OSHA, and then there's cyber security rules, and then they want to go set up a website, and oh my goodness, that's a whole other can of worms there. And now, what can you do or not do about reviews on Google and like all of these things that are pressing down on them with compliance? By the time they get to something like HR, they're like, We're dying. And also, what do you mean? There's like, this much. What do you mean? I need a 60 page handbook? Well, you're in California, you actually need more pages than that. They just get buried under it. And so in fairness, like nobody can be expected to know all of those things you know. We hopefully expect you to know your board compliance when it comes to your license for your scope of practice. But past that, nobody can be expected to know every single thing out there. And that's why we we have people in this field that we are able to bring to you, and that's why we want to connect with those people. And you want those people there to say, this is what you need to do, and this is how we make it simple, this is how we take care of it for you, because that just helps ease that burden that is just really, truly a crushing load of compliance at this point.
Amy Wood (28:55):
And I think we vet our colleagues as much as I tend to vet vendors. So I mean, that'll be okay. Let me say this 375, point checklist. No, it's not quite that bad. I do have a long form for those that are a big old red flag on the short form, it's kind of like a PCI compliance questionnaire, like, if you get the 13 questions wrong, then you get the 375, question one. But I've done this with vendors. I can talk about that all day long. It's just,
Kara D Kelley (29:31):
it's not any fun. What does PCI stand for? Amy payment card
Amy Wood (29:35):
industry? There you go. Such a dork. Well, I mean, with vendors, though, I've been vetting vendors back before it was cool, so I used to routinely have large companies threaten to sue me simply for asking simple questions that were required as part of HIPAA and. Nobody was doing it. The practices weren't doing it. The vendors were like, they were like, we have a captive audience. Just we have 1000 people that trust us. Why can't you? Actually, I had a vendor that said that to me, and I was like, Oh, so you got 1000 people to trust you. Good for you. I'm just asking simple, basic questions that should be really easy for you. So now I have a stance on I won't recommend a vendor unless they've gone through this process. I won't refer I won't, you know, allow them to come into a room if I'm speaking. I won't you know, we're we're doing this with our our guests as well, whether they work for a vendor or they work for themselves. They're a solopreneur, they have a company, whatever it is, they need to be experts, and they themselves need to be a compliant AF
Kara D Kelley (30:54):
and hold themselves to a high ethical standard, I think is between the two of us, one of the things that we definitely share, as far as a core value of business ethics and treating their teams Well, at least from my side, definitely treating their teams well, making sure that they're compliant. On the employment side, that's there are some vendors out there that I can't recommend because they aren't to my knowledge and like things I can't I can't do an HR audit on every single person. I'm not going to go into every company and, you know, ask for all of their employees private documents, unless they've engaged me to do that. However, that would be weird, maybe a little bit. I don't know if anybody would be all that surprised, quite honestly, but it would be a little weird. But I if I happen to know that there is something that isn't doing that is not compliant, and I brought it to their attention, because I can't help myself, that's what I do. Brought it to their attention, and they haven't. Made any shifts, or they haven't investigated that, or they haven't, you know, gone and figured out what the issues are and how to fix them, or aren't interested in doing so that I can't, in good conscious, have them as a sponsor. I can't, I can't have them, you know, as a guest. If I possibly know the things like I and I don't refer to them as best as I possibly can. I understand that there's different perspectives on different people, and that everything that we do and everyone we recommend, we can't 100% guarantee that they're going to be 100% on every single thing. Like we'd love to be able to do that, but that's not realistic. And just from a, you know, legal disclaimer perspective, that we are not recommending or referring or ensuring anything, right? Because we're not your due diligence. Yes, we're not your advisors. We're also not their advisors unless they've engaged us to be and so and some of them have, at which point I do the
(32:28):
best of my ability, just like what, what I do with my my health care clients, my doctor clients, making sure that they at least know that they are not compliant with something. If that is the case, ifif they choose not to do it, then that's that's on them. At the end of the day, I've done my
Amy Wood (32:44):
job. I agree, and I think this season is going to be fun. We're we're doing a lot of things that are new and interesting, and we're trying to have candid conversations. This will not be scripted. This will not be yet the same every time we're sharing our conversations with you. Thank you so much for joining us for this introductory episode, and we look forward to having you come back to our next episode, where we will have our first guests, and in the meantime, for the entire practice, for owners, doctors, teams, whoever you are, stay compliant. AF you.
Kara, welcome to the compliant AF Podcast where healthcare compliance isn't just a checklist, it's a competitive advantage.
Amy Wood (00:07):
I'm Amy wood, CEO of copper penny consulting, a cyber security and HIPAA compliance geek who thinks encryption is awesome.
Kara D Kelley (00:13):
And I'm Kara Kelley, CEO of clinical HR fractional HR business partner and HR nerd who is weirdly passionate about employment policy
Amy Wood (00:19):
if you're a dental or health care leader who's tired of check the box compliance and wants to actually understand what the rules are and how to build a practice that doesn't live in fear of audits or lawsuits, we
Kara D Kelley (00:30):
are in the right place. We are digging into the stuff that keeps practice leaders at night, we'll
Amy Wood (00:34):
break down the boring, call out the BS and share real strategies with a little snark and a whole lot of caffeine. This isn't legal advice. We are not your lawyers. We are two consultants who have seen way too many practices get in trouble because no one explained the rules in a way that actually made sense or made them care. But since this is a compliance
Kara D Kelley (00:50):
podcast, the content in this podcast are any associated clips for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, tax or regulatory advice. We are not attorneys clinical HR LLC and copper penny consulting LLC are not legal firms. Not legal firms, and listening to this podcast does not create a client relationship. Always consult a qualified professional
Amy Wood (01:09):
advisor for guidance specific to your situation. So buckle up, because boring compliance just got compliant.
Kara D Kelley (01:15):
AF, my goodness, I don't know why we haven't done this before. We've literally talked about this for years now, like, what are we almost in 2026
Amy Wood (01:24):
hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and late night phone calls. Of You won't believe what happened to me today. If we just
Kara D Kelley (01:32):
would have recorded the phone calls, of course, then we would have had to wonder whether or not anybody was in a single party state versus a two party state. We would have to, we'd have to get authorization,
Amy Wood (01:43):
but we have seen some stuff. Yes, we have.
Kara D Kelley (01:47):
And honestly, I think this is going to be one of my favorite parts about what we're doing here. You know, we are both very, incredibly passionate about compliance in our own right. We're both experts in our own right, and we both have all of these stories, but a lot of it just stems from people who don't care enough to do things the right way. And I feel like that is something that we hear so many complaints about. We hear so many complaints about the team members who just won't do what they're supposed to do, who aren't following the policies. But sometimes it's it's the leaders that are not setting that example of compliance, they're not helping the team see that they need to build this compliance focused culture that really, I think would drive a lot of this and solve a lot of these problems, if we all just felt like this should be a huge priority in our practices.
Amy Wood (02:36):
Wouldn't it be nice to have basically work ourselves out of a job.
Kara D Kelley (02:42):
Yeah, I don't know that there's a risk of that happening.
Amy Wood (02:49):
I would love that. It would, it would just, it would make me so happy that people were so safe within their practices and their business was solid and secure and never do
Kara D Kelley (03:03):
another data breach again.
Amy Wood (03:07):
Okay, so I'm really good at it. I know what I'm doing. I've done hundreds of these, and I've never had a fine or a patient lawsuit or anybody close their doors. But I cannot stand doing data breach investigations. They the the risk management part of that, the chaos, the eye twitching, just all of it. It's not fun for for me, and it's it's definitely not fun for the people I work with. And if we would just all be a little proactive, then we can manage those incidents when they actually happen, and
Kara D Kelley (03:41):
then you wouldn't have to have those heartbreaking conversations where you have to tell a doctor that actually you do need to write that check or wire that money because you're not getting your data back. Otherwise, yeah,
Amy Wood (03:52):
it's, it's, yeah, it's sad. So it's
Kara D Kelley (03:55):
also tripping over dollars to pick up nickels is one of my favorite expressions. I think of a lot of things that we do in dentistry, what we do in healthcare that we don't really focus on what the the true cost could be, if only, and so we don't get that extra compliance training where we make sure that our team knows not to click those links in those emails, or that we know that our team is trained on The policies that don't lead to certain types of internal investigations. We don't bother with that because we don't want to pay the couple hours of wages for them to do the training. Instead, we wait until something bad happens, and then when it does, it really happens.
Amy Wood (04:36):
It really happens. And for our listeners that have no idea who we are or what we do, this will be the only episode that we get into the nitty gritty of that we may allude to it in future episodes, but Kara and I have both been on enough podcasts as guests sharing the same why we do this story over and over and over again. Find a short. Tell us about your story.
Kara D Kelley (05:01):
How did you get started?
Amy Wood (05:06):
The short version is, I became a victim of financial and medical identity theft because my dental X rays ended up for sale on the dark web, along with my name, birth date, social security number and my insurance medical record number. I'm not worth enough, sadly, and I'm so locked down it's it's hard for things to get through, but I've had people impersonate me to try to get cell phones and SIM card swap to try to intercept my multi factor authentication codes when I was running a dental IT company, and I've had people call into my business credit card to try to get additional authorized users on my business account, and I even had someone impersonate me to try to procure medical services, and messed up my medical records so bad that I was not able to get my blood pressure medication. That's a big deal for me.
Kara D Kelley (06:06):
Little bit oh my goodness, yeah, but
Amy Wood (06:09):
took those lemons and turned it into lemonade and turned that into copper penny, and became little passionate, a little crazy and very forward thinking about compliance overall, and how the smaller markets like dental, chiropractic, ophthalmology, kind of the outliers of health care tend to look at not just HIPAA and privacy and cyber security. They're looking at all aspects of compliance with this lens of, how do I do it quick, and how do I do it cheap? And that's one of the things we talk about a lot,
Kara D Kelley (06:47):
you know, from a different perspective. Amy God, what an overreaction. She was so mad at her identity being stolen that she went and turned it into a whole freaking career.
Amy Wood (06:59):
It was, I was looking through some old stuff my parents house not too long ago, and some old report cards popped up that said She talks too much and she's bossy. And I just found a way to utilize those strengths of mine and channel it into speaking and consulting and speaking with the intent to consult and consulting with the intent to educate, and kind of vice versa.
Kara D Kelley (07:28):
So here we are. Here we are. I mean, our origin story, I had a similar where I kind of fell into it, honestly, like it wasn't an intention. Nobody grows up thinking, oh my gosh, I want to be a dental HR consultant. No, I do say I have every teenage girl's dream job that I get paid to talk so that's something. But no, I was, I was actually going to school for a marketing degree. I had been self employed in a completely different field. I was thinking that that would be something that would be useful for me, even if I never went to go work in corporate with it, and I took an HR class as part of my general business credits, and fell in love with it and switched my major. And then at the end or so of my education, it was about a year or so left, and at the time, this was like 2012 where, you know, we didn't just hire the first person who showed up on time and sober. So I was looking at my resume and going, Well, all I have is self employment for the last several years. So maybe I should go take a job doing something somewhere, and then when I finished my degree, I can go and join corporate America and work my way up the ladder and some HR department of a fortune 500 company and start as a generalist and maybe be an HR director one day. And none of that happened, because I landed at a dental CPA firm, of all things, doing marketing while I was trying to finish my degree, and as I was in some of the meetings with clients trying to learn more about what the firm did be able to do better on the marketing side and write copy that was more organic, I started asking questions, and The clients in the meetings had questions that my boss couldn't answer, and so I answered for them, because apparently I can't help myself, and I talk too much as we told
Amy Wood (09:08):
occasionally you can't help yourself trying to boss someone
Kara D Kelley (09:12):
around, I couldn't, although I did have a moment that whenever I answered one of their questions, I remember this by the way, it was about overtime. They were asking about overtime, and it wasn't a question of like, how do you pay it, or when do you pay it? It was like, how do we you know, what is the threshold of too much overtime? And so I started answering that question, because my boss had a blank look on his face. And then they turned to me and they asked me a couple of other questions, and I'm just going, oh my gosh, wait. Well, people went like, what real answers now? What is happening?
Amy Wood (09:39):
Oh, no, I just became important crap. Yes,
Kara D Kelley (09:43):
they want real, real information. Oh, my. And so I kind of did a very quick pivot into being a consultant at that point, and after I was there about seven and a half years, and kind of worked my way into becoming a business development and HR consultant, where I was doing internal HR for the firm as we grew, I did HR advisory for the clients. I wrote. Business plans with the clients and sat through some of their meetings and ended up mistaken for a CPA far too many times. I am certainly not a CPA. I really, really love HR, so I went ahead and decided to branch out on my own and start my own firm, originally for speaking, but then we had a pandemic, and so I did kind of a very quick 360 degree with more of a pirouette than a pivot, three pirouette. Right back to me a consultant in about a three week span because covid.
Amy Wood (10:28):
Now it's interesting, because I always did consulting first and speaking was a means to get people to understand why we were doing things the way we were doing them. And really it started for me as trying to educate people on why we were changing our IT business from basically a fee for service, or what we called a when something was broken, you would fix it a break fix model, and we were moving to manage services. We were having a list of security services as our our main asset that we were providing to clients, and then support was what they wanted. That was, that was the crack they wanted. But they they needed all the other things, the proactive shift. Yes, yes, a proactive shift. Those were much better words, and it took a long time because the industry as a whole didn't really care. I mean, they still struggle with that, but back then, you know, 15 years ago, they just it was you bought, you bought a DIY manual, and half of them that I saw were still in the shrink wrap in an office, and they were several years old, gathering dust on them, and I realized very quickly that it I could do what I could do in terms of it, and I could protect these people as long as I could get through to them. But there was what I was doing. Was really only about 20% of HIPAA, and the rest of it, there were a lot of people that talked about that, but then we had this weird shift in about 2007 Eight, the last time the economy stunk, and very different way, if you remember that time. But that was about also the same time that dental offices were putting they were digitizing everything. They were putting computers and operatories and digital X rays. And it was a wild time. And it was just about the time I started having dependence, when my kids started happening. You know, my oldest was born the day that Lehman Brothers collapsed, and my second was born the worst Black Friday shopping season ever in history. And so, like we, we had some rough years, but also
(12:49):
Dentistry was kind of insulated during that, and they, they were willing to embrace things that were new. But for some reason, when it comes to compliance, there's just this old ideology of, well,it's just something that, it's a checkbox we have to fix, and it doesn't really matter what is said or what we do, we just have to check the boxes. But surprisingly, I'm finding, I know you're finding this too. There are a lot of practices that actually want to do this right, and they are tired of preventable things happening, and they
Kara D Kelley (13:26):
want to get ahead of it. And I've actually had an interesting phenomena last couple of years where it's the it's the newer doctors that are buying the practices and starting the practices that have actually seen what has happened, and are listening to those stories. You've got a number of people who are coming and speaking at schools, and speaking at schools, and so they're hearing those stories whenever they're in school. They're paying attention to social media, and they actually want to do things right from the beginning. They're not just saying, Hey, I know, you know, I've got tons of student loan debt, I've got practice note that I've got to deal with, but I don't really just want the absolute cheapest I want something that really is going to work for us. And I just, Oh, those are my favorite people to work with right now.
Amy Wood (14:04):
Mine too. And you know, the interesting thing is, you have to start small with offices like that, because they tend to have a lot of turnover. They tend to have a lot of other things on their brain at that point, and you have to just follow up routinely and continue to add compliance into the overall schematics of the office, for lack of a better phrase, and those offices tend to have it together.
Kara D Kelley (14:33):
So how do we do that? How do we actually get people interested in this, and not just interested like actually wanting to be as compliant as possible, who are really putting this first, who are very passionate compliant, AF, who want to be compliant, AF who aren't, who aren't just wanting to check a box. They really, really, actually care about this. And from the perspective of not just the Practice Leader, that this is their practice, and of course, they want to protect their baby, how do you get your team members invested in. Being compliance and putting that as a first step.
Amy Wood (15:02):
Well, that's what we're going to talk about on this podcast. Every time we post something, it'll be a little bit of a different topic, and that was one of the reasons we wanted to do this podcast, was because we get pigeonholed in our respective expertise. So when people hear, HR, what do they immediately think? Kara, employee handbooks, right, and labor law disputes, yes, that's all they think
Kara D Kelley (15:29):
about. And payroll and recruiting and oh my, and headaches and people are costing me way too much money. Yes, no. HR, that's one of the things I've had to contend with. No, I think the question I was really going for is, like, how do we actually get people that interested in it? And some of it is about making it interesting, period, like making it entertaining, making it sharing the stories that we have. Got so many stories. Oh my gosh, how do we not have a book yet? Girl, I got a lot of stories podcast yet,
Amy Wood (15:55):
and we'll share what we can, what we're legally allowed to share
Kara D Kelley (16:01):
that's not currently under active litigation,
Amy Wood (16:03):
and say save those that have been accused or incriminated and generalized information
Kara D Kelley (16:12):
changing the names to protect the guilty and the innocent both. Yes,
Amy Wood (16:16):
well, I know on my end, when people hear HIPAA, they automatically think privacy, or they think cybersecurity, but there's so many little details in it. And in my business, we also do all areas of safety, compliance and regulation. We do not touch HR, we do not like there's boundaries even within what we do. And you know, we we have an expert who will periodically come on here and there, and within OSHA, which is what she does, usually, when people say OSHA, they really mean infection control, because that's the class they think they're getting. But OSHA is an entirely different topic, and I am not the expert. I do not understand any of that. Even with the infection control stuff, I get grossed out and start gagging and realize I am way better on this side of of health care. I have done my time as a nursing assistant. I do not need to go back. Sputum grosses me out. More power to you clinical people, but not my thing.
Kara D Kelley (17:18):
Hard pass. I was a Clinical Massage Therapist, and that is because I did not want to deal with needles or blood. So that was as close as I was going to get to clinical. We will let the the experts handle the expert things, and that's actually part of why we wanted to start this as well. It's not going to just be about us talking about our two respective topics. It's it's us. As we were deep diving on this, we kind of expanded the range on it. We're like, there's other topics we want to talk about. There's other topics we want people to hear that they also need to have that passion for being compliant. AF. And so we want to bring on those experts here. We want to bring on people who are really well studied in OSHA, infection control, in fraud, embezzlement, in IRS regulations, in marketing, website regulations, and ADA compliance, as far as I get, like, all of these things that, my goodness, we could have an alphabet soup of acronyms here, of all of the things that we will, oh, I'm sure we will. And like, if this is something that that, you know, we continue doing, and we want to continue putting the effort, and, my goodness, we could have years and years and years of seasons, and probably not loop the entire the same expert twice, or talk about the same topic, topic twice.
Amy Wood (18:27):
We may need to have a glossary for people to understand all the acronyms at some point
Kara D Kelley (18:32):
that is probably fair. Hopefully the experts are going to be speakers like we are, where we understand that not everybody knows the acronyms and the DOLs and fmlas and flsas and IRS is and all of the others that go along with at least my world and that they will break those things down and explain it. So that's but that's why we want them here. We want them to explain it. We don't want to
Amy Wood (18:56):
explain it. No, I I get annoyed with that. Every time I go to a meeting and I hear someone using all the acronyms, I'm like, Cool. I know that you understand that, but I need to know what you mean by that, because don't automatically, like, I'm not an expert on this yet. That's why I'm here listening to you well,
Kara D Kelley (19:15):
and it just sounds a little arrogant. Honestly, the speakers who get up there and intentionally use industry jargon, and this is across the board. This is not just in compliance. This is across the board. And health care and outside of health care. I know you take take courses in CE outside of health care, and as do I, and so we're used to hearing a lot of speakers where I'm in my world. I'm used to hearing a lot of attorneys reading off slides, and I don't know if they expect us all to know all the things that sometimes they kind of get that, that air about them of I am an expert, and I've got this ego, and you should listen to me because of that. And I think both of us really take more of an organic human lens to it, that we are more relatable in that sense, whenever we're on stage, because we actually try to put ourselves in the audience's perspective. Yeah, and it's I know whenever I listen to you speak, that's what I appreciate about you, that you are making it something that's relatable to them. And I think that's really ties back to what, what I want us to be able to do here is make compliance relatable. Make it something that is interesting, not something that is a have to do. It's a we know that this is important, and we want to do this because it matters.
Amy Wood (20:22):
I know when I get some of my feedback forms on classes, even with clients I've had for, you know, a decade or more at this point, I always get something in there that says I always learn something new from you every year. Some of it is repeat. Yeah, I can't help that. It hasn't changed in almost 30 years, but, but there's always something new, and there's a different perspective, or there's a different story, or there's something that's relatable, or it's a new topic that's popped up within this world, and
Kara D Kelley (20:56):
something you said last year that they forgot. Because unless you're doing this day every day, this isn't something that comes second nature to you,
Amy Wood (21:04):
and I will say that is a conversation you and I have had a lot where these topics are constantly evolving, and I know for me and in my business, and this podcast is not a sales pitch. We just want to clarify that right now, neither one of us is looking for new clients through this. You know, if y'all want to call us for whatever, we're fine with that. And, you know, we just want to help people stop doing preventable things. That's it. But I know, in my business, what I'm I'm doing is I'll cross over a little bit, but nobody on my team will ever be able to be an expert in any more than two topics, period. And even that's a stretch. So like I do a lot with DEA compliance, but that is not my main topic. My main topic is HIPAA and privacy and cyber security and making sure that is 100% dialed in. So when there's a problem, someone can call me, and I can be like, Oh, okay, so I've dealt with this, and we're going to do X, Y and Z and A, B, C, D, E as our alternatives. And it's like a flow chart in my brain every time I get a call. And I know that sounds nerdy, but that's really what has to happen in order to survive this stuff successfully, and that's when you have an expert that can do that. But you know, if I had five or six topics, I wouldn't be able to be an expert in that. You know, I have meetings I go to, I have groups that I'm a part of. I have certifications I have to maintain. I have my own CE I have to do to stay up on top of these things. And that's what makes an expert, not just throwing something into an AI platform and saying, Okay, I can speak on this topic. Now, I know we all have to start somewhere, but No, and that's fair.
Kara D Kelley (22:59):
I have, and I've said, similar whenever I'm doing an employee handbook engagement, for example, where there's a lot of areas that I have to touch on, or at least know a little bit about, but I will frequently tell my clients I know enough to know you need to go talk to an expert. So when we're writing their benefits policies and we're talking about insurance, and they asked me a question about 401, K's, I know enough to know you need to go to know you need to go talk to your financial planner or your CPA. We talked about health insurance. I know enough to know you need to go talk to your broker. I from what I understand, this is what XYZ might be. But I'm not the expert, and I am more than willing to admit that. And that to me, actually, I think, is one of the hallmarks of somebody who is truly within their niche and really owning their lane is that they know what they they know, but they also know what they don't know, and they're not afraid or embarrassed at all to say, I don't know the answer, but let me find that for you or I don't know the answer, and this is the person that you should go talk to.
Amy Wood (23:54):
And staying extremely well connected in this industry is a huge, huge, huge part of that. I mean, that's a big thing that I do with data breaches, with crisis management, because most of the people that come to me don't have cyber insurance, and so I'm having to kind of gather resources for them, and they don't know where to go or who to call. They're going to call someone that doesn't know what they're doing. And so that's kind of my job is to have the skill set to be able to contact the right people for the right job and refer correctly. So that's one thing I really pride myself on. Is in this industry, we know people, and we haven't turned them all off in some way or another,
Kara D Kelley (24:43):
even have agreed to be guests on this podcast.
Amy Wood (24:46):
No, I know they like us. They really like us,
Kara D Kelley (24:50):
either that or they're just about as nerdy as we are with our own little niche of top compliance. And I'm actually really looking forward to some of these conversations when we were. Coming up with this list of different categories and things that we could talk about for a season. My goodness, we ended up with something like, what, 1415, different topics, with a list of excerpts where we have at least two or three for each one of those topics. Like, Hmm, okay, well, there are going to be some episodes with with the two of us talking about our thing. But I think we could probably fill an entire season or 12, having every episode you want an expert, because we just we've been doing this for so long, and we have gotten so entrenched in this world. And not just what's funny is it's not just in like dentistry, you and I primarily work in dentistry, but we also have other other health care professions that we serve, and we have other connections that are outside of that. And so like some of the people that I really excited to bring on are people who have nothing to do with dentistry, but they're experts in their thing. One of one of the people that I will be bringing on at some point is a background check expert, like he 100% knows, like Fair Credit Reporting Act, and he deep dives on this. He goes around the country, and he speaks to other HR Association chapters and teaches other HR professionals about what you should and shouldn't do with background checks. And there's a lot of misconceptions there. And so I'm really excited to bring him on for that. But he's not somebody who works in our world. He just, he is just absolutely an expert in his and then his team, and he's one of the people that I refer to without any expectation of a kickback or anything, or based on merit, to his background check company, because I know that they are compliant as and they are the most comprehensive background checks I've seen for healthcare. So it's my
(26:33):
number one go to recommendation. And so I want to bring people like that into this world and get that expertise in front of people who could really benefit from it, in front of those leaders who mayeither not be doing background checks at all. We know that happens, never, right? Which
Amy Wood (26:49):
is why we know people that do embezzlement
Kara D Kelley (26:52):
Well, yes, and
Amy Wood (26:56):
investigations, not the actual embezzling. To clarify,
Kara D Kelley (27:01):
fair enough, yes, that's why we have those people on speed dial, yes or Facebook Messenger, as it is some days.
Amy Wood (27:08):
I mean, just even as we're talking, I'm thinking of 10 other people outside of of dentistry that I deal with. You know, I've been involved in groups where the majority of the people are in the financial sector, and they're looking at me like, why are you having the kinds of problems you're having? I'm like, because it's a smaller market, and it's 15 years behind in technology, and my job sucks some days. Okay, that's just it
Kara D Kelley (27:39):
well. And in fairness, like by the time doctors make it through school, by the time they get into the workforce, by the time they start their practices, they are inundated with compliance. They have their dental or medical board compliance, then they have HIPAA, and then they have OSHA, and then there's cyber security rules, and then they want to go set up a website, and oh my goodness, that's a whole other can of worms there. And now, what can you do or not do about reviews on Google and like all of these things that are pressing down on them with compliance? By the time they get to something like HR, they're like, We're dying. And also, what do you mean? There's like, this much. What do you mean? I need a 60 page handbook? Well, you're in California, you actually need more pages than that. They just get buried under it. And so in fairness, like nobody can be expected to know all of those things you know. We hopefully expect you to know your board compliance when it comes to your license for your scope of practice. But past that, nobody can be expected to know every single thing out there. And that's why we we have people in this field that we are able to bring to you, and that's why we want to connect with those people. And you want those people there to say, this is what you need to do, and this is how we make it simple, this is how we take care of it for you, because that just helps ease that burden that is just really, truly a crushing load of compliance at this point.
Amy Wood (28:55):
And I think we vet our colleagues as much as I tend to vet vendors. So I mean, that'll be okay. Let me say this 375, point checklist. No, it's not quite that bad. I do have a long form for those that are a big old red flag on the short form, it's kind of like a PCI compliance questionnaire, like, if you get the 13 questions wrong, then you get the 375, question one. But I've done this with vendors. I can talk about that all day long. It's just,
Kara D Kelley (29:31):
it's not any fun. What does PCI stand for? Amy payment card
Amy Wood (29:35):
industry? There you go. Such a dork. Well, I mean, with vendors, though, I've been vetting vendors back before it was cool, so I used to routinely have large companies threaten to sue me simply for asking simple questions that were required as part of HIPAA and. Nobody was doing it. The practices weren't doing it. The vendors were like, they were like, we have a captive audience. Just we have 1000 people that trust us. Why can't you? Actually, I had a vendor that said that to me, and I was like, Oh, so you got 1000 people to trust you. Good for you. I'm just asking simple, basic questions that should be really easy for you. So now I have a stance on I won't recommend a vendor unless they've gone through this process. I won't refer I won't, you know, allow them to come into a room if I'm speaking. I won't you know, we're we're doing this with our our guests as well, whether they work for a vendor or they work for themselves. They're a solopreneur, they have a company, whatever it is, they need to be experts, and they themselves need to be a compliant AF
Kara D Kelley (30:54):
and hold themselves to a high ethical standard, I think is between the two of us, one of the things that we definitely share, as far as a core value of business ethics and treating their teams Well, at least from my side, definitely treating their teams well, making sure that they're compliant. On the employment side, that's there are some vendors out there that I can't recommend because they aren't to my knowledge and like things I can't I can't do an HR audit on every single person. I'm not going to go into every company and, you know, ask for all of their employees private documents, unless they've engaged me to do that. However, that would be weird, maybe a little bit. I don't know if anybody would be all that surprised, quite honestly, but it would be a little weird. But I if I happen to know that there is something that isn't doing that is not compliant, and I brought it to their attention, because I can't help myself, that's what I do. Brought it to their attention, and they haven't. Made any shifts, or they haven't investigated that, or they haven't, you know, gone and figured out what the issues are and how to fix them, or aren't interested in doing so that I can't, in good conscious, have them as a sponsor. I can't, I can't have them, you know, as a guest. If I possibly know the things like I and I don't refer to them as best as I possibly can. I understand that there's different perspectives on different people, and that everything that we do and everyone we recommend, we can't 100% guarantee that they're going to be 100% on every single thing. Like we'd love to be able to do that, but that's not realistic. And just from a, you know, legal disclaimer perspective, that we are not recommending or referring or ensuring anything, right? Because we're not your due diligence. Yes, we're not your advisors. We're also not their advisors unless they've engaged us to be and so and some of them have, at which point I do the
(32:28):
best of my ability, just like what, what I do with my my health care clients, my doctor clients, making sure that they at least know that they are not compliant with something. If that is the case, ifif they choose not to do it, then that's that's on them. At the end of the day, I've done my
Amy Wood (32:44):
job. I agree, and I think this season is going to be fun. We're we're doing a lot of things that are new and interesting, and we're trying to have candid conversations. This will not be scripted. This will not be yet the same every time we're sharing our conversations with you. Thank you so much for joining us for this introductory episode, and we look forward to having you come back to our next episode, where we will have our first guests, and in the meantime, for the entire practice, for owners, doctors, teams, whoever you are, stay compliant. AF you.
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