Theory of Regulatory Compliance: Empirical Evidence for Ceiling Effect, Sweet Spot Phenomenon, and Diminishing Effects

The Theory of Regulatory Compliance is finding the “right” rules that govern outcomes for clients. It is not about more or less rules, that is a waste of time. The theory clearly demonstrates that by employing a key indicator risk assessments methodology it is a relatively straightforward process in finding the rules that protect clients and predict overall regulatory compliance and quality services.

As of this writing, it is the only regulatory compliance theory that has such a solid empirical base with multiple research studies which clearly demonstrate this relationship between regulatory compliance and quality of services. The theory has over the past forty years produced “ceiling effects”, “diminishing returns”, and the “sweet spot phenomenon” in the results utilizing the statistical methodologies which spin off from it.

Please keep in mind that when the theory emphasizes the importance of substantial regulatory compliance, it was not diminishing the importance of full 100% regulatory compliance. What it was doing was demonstrating that substantial regulatory compliance was equally as important as full regulatory compliance and should be considered in making licensing decisions. Full 100% regulatory compliance is still critical in protecting clients but it will not get you fully to quality services. That is where an infusion of quality needs to be included in rules and regulations.

This above thinking has led to a balance of differential monitoring and integrated monitoring of human services facilities. Differential monitoring deals with focused inspections based upon the key indicator risk assessments statistical methodologies while integrated monitoring is the balancing of regulatory compliance with key quality indicators. From a program monitoring point of view, it is the best of both worlds when it comes to designing an effective and efficient system.

The theory has also led us to reconsider how we measure licensing and regulatory compliance data in helping us move from a nominal measurement strategy to one that is more at an ordinal measurement level. This new ordinal measurement is call the “Regulatory Compliance Scale” and is based upon a more theoretically sound metric which follows the theory of Full, Substantial, Mediocre regulatory compliance levels. This new scale has also been empirically demonstrated and clearly shows it is superior to the standard, old paradigm where regulatory compliance is measured at a nominal level utilizing violation frequency data.

And lastly, the theory of regulatory compliance has clearly helped to bring to light an approach to eliminate false negatives and reduce false positives in our decision making regarding rules as well as licensing decision making. This last result will have a profound impact on random clinical trials. This result and all the results above can be found in research studies and publications on the following research institute data laboratory website: https://rikinstitute.com