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Helping companies stay compliant
Founded by Vincent DiCianni in 2004, Affiliated Monitors, Inc. in Boston, MA, specializes in independent monitoring services for companies or licensed professionals facing disciplinary actions by government agencies or professional licensing boards. In addition, businesses hire Affiliated Monitors to help proactively reduce the risk of encountering problems with government agencies. Affiliated Monitors serves clients throughout the United States and internationally.
When asked what independent monitoring is, DiCianni explained that if a governing body discovered a company in violation of regulations, ethical standards, contract terms, or other matters, the business needs to make corrections or risk losing the continuation of its operations. Independent monitoring is a type of sanction where the government agency permits the company to remain in business but with an objective entity overseeing the corrective actions the company is compelled to implement to address the issues identified as deficiencies by the government.
Over the past nearly twenty years, Affiliated Monitors have overseen hundreds of matters where companies in question right their wrongdoings and demonstrate that they have effectively fixed their problems through reports submitted by the monitor to the governing body.
“Think about it in terms of a company has done something wrong, but behavior is not so severe that the government wants to knock them out of business. You don’t want to prosecute them criminally, but the reality is that they need to fix things. So, an agreement is reached and order entered in which the government requires the company to fix these things and return to good standing,” said DiCianni.
Affiliated Monitors’s role in these arrangements is to test and confirm whether the business or professional is following the terms of the agreement and making the necessary improvements. DiCianni further illustrated what his company does. “Let’s say a medical board flagged a doctor for over prescribing or dispensing pain medication. If the doctor doesn’t make changes, he could lose his license to practice medicine. When the agreement with the board is executed, the MD would hire Affiliated Monitors to oversee and validate the effectiveness of the changes he’s implemented. A monitor will watch and make sure the monitored entity or individual is living up to the obligations made to the government agency. In some ways, it's like a civil probation. So, the monitor is there to make sure that, in this example, the doctor is doing the things he's supposed to do and not doing the things he's not supposed to do.”
Another example DiCianni provided is within government contracting. “We do a lot of work with the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies which work with companies that have gotten in trouble for procurement fraud, performance deficiencies, contract violations or other failures, not delivering services or goods that are of the quality that they contracted to provide. False claims, billing fraud and timecard violations are other situations that are often subjects to discipline. There is a variety of different kinds of things that companies get in trouble for. And so, often, in addition to penalties or fines, to effectuate behavior change, government agencies put a monitor in place to make sure that the entity has fixed or is fixing things. It is the mandate for the monitor to make sure that the company's doing what it agreed to do, with reports submitted to the government. The government receives the information it needs to decide whether it will do more business with the company—or to move forward with the monitor no longer necessary.”
Before starting Affiliated Monitors, DiCianni was a defense attorney. He worked in the Massachusetts Attorney General's office, representing the Commonwealth. He then went into private practice with two Boston law firms, where he represented professionals and companies before government agencies. Those experiences inspired DiCianni to form a company that offered monitoring services as an alternative form of sanction to be utilized by government agencies, businesses and the attorneys representing them. “In the work that I was doing, there were instances where the behavior by my client was bad, but it wasn't so bad that you should knock them out of business.”
DiCianni emphasized that many professionals and businesses excel in their core competencies but need help with regulatory compliance. “Think of it as companies not crossing t’s and dotting i’s and being suspended for five years because they didn't do technical things correctly; it bothered me as an attorney. I came up with this notion of creating an independent monitoring service where government agencies could affirmatively require companies to fix behavior and change their business compliance and controls. What we find is a lot of healthcare providers and businesses are really good at the things that they do in their businesses. They're really good doctors, they're really good construction companies, they're really good at making widgets, but they're really lousy at business or following regulatory schemes.”
DiCianni explained that the monitored company pays for the monitoring service and spoke about its benefits. “Number one, the government has oversight for a period of time, over the company that has been the subject of investigation for any number of violations. Effective independent monitoring provides the type of regular, detailed oversight which compels the company to change for the better. Most government agencies simply do not have the capacity to provide direct oversight of disciplined companies on a regular basis. Number two is the benefit for the company. The sole customer for many companies is a government body. Independent monitoring can serve as a lifeline. It offers them the ability to stay in practice or in business and fix things that perhaps had gotten past them. So, for them, it's the opportunity to redeem themselves in the eyes of the government and fix the deficiencies that have been identified.”
DiCianni identified two other beneficiaries of independent monitoring—the employees of the business in question and its customers. “We've worked with companies that have tens of thousands of employees. Think about putting those people out of work. There's a loss of revenue; there's a loss of income, taxes, and all of those kinds of things. Another benefit is that in many cases, customers, patients and clients of these companies want to continue to engage with those companies that they have done business, or the doctor that has been treating them for years.”
The other service line offered by Affiliated Monitors is to help companies reduce the risk of government intervention, including assessing and testing corporate compliance programs and ethical cultures of companies. “There are a lot of companies nowadays, through council generally, that will reach out to us and say, we never want to get in trouble with the agency. We read all about a case involving a competitor, and we never want that to happen to us. So they proactively will bring us on board to help them reduce the risk of something bad happening by putting the right controls in place, helping them implement a strong compliance program, and by making sure that the ethical culture of the company is strong and headed in the right direction. Affiliated Monitors provides proactive assessments of their compliance programs, their internal controls and their ethical cultures. It's a way of reducing the risk of something really bad happening and getting suspended or debarred for doing something inappropriate.”
For more information about Affiliated Monitors, Inc., check out their BBB Business Profile. To learn more about BBB and read more stories like this, visit Behind the Business Stories with BBB in Eastern MA, ME, RI & VT.
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