Chapter 13 - The First Audit
My first major assignment as head of the state health compliance division brought me right back to where it all began: Metropolitan General Hospital.
It was a cold Tuesday morning in January when my team of compliance inspectors walked through the rotating glass doors of the lobby.
The atmosphere in the hospital was noticeably different. Director Vance had quietly taken early retirement following the PR fallout from Marcus’s suspension and the ensuing compliance investigations. A new, more transparent administration was attempting to clean house.
As we rode the elevator up to the administrative suites on the ninth floor, my inspectors were reviewing the initial data sets.
“Dr. Hayes’s former department has completely overhauled its logging software,” one of my junior auditors noted, tapping his tablet. “Every single isolation exemption request now requires dual-signature verification from an independent ethics officer. No exceptions.”
May you like
“Good,” I said smoothly as the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. “Rules only work when they are enforced equally for everyone, from the newest intern to the most celebrated surgeon.”
We spent the entire day combing through digital archives, emergency exemption records, and patient tracking logs. Not a single discrepancy was found in the current files. The system was finally doing what it was designed to do: protecting patients, not egos.
