The overview
The short list that actually applies
For most independent practices the recurring obligations cluster in a few places: patient privacy and data security, workplace safety, any testing performed in the office, the rules governing financial relationships with people who send or receive referrals, and documentation that supports what was billed.
That list is short enough to hold in your head. The detail underneath each item is not, which is why the practical question is usually who owns each one and how often it gets looked at, rather than whether someone has read the full regulation.
HIPAA, in practice
The parts that generate real exposure in small practices tend to be ordinary: a risk assessment that was done once and never revisited, workforce training that happened at onboarding and nowhere since, agreements with vendors who touch patient data, and no rehearsed answer for what happens in the first hours after a suspected breach.
Ransomware moved this from an IT topic to an operational one, because a practice that cannot reach its records cannot see patients, regardless of what the regulations say.
OSHA and CLIA
Workplace safety obligations in a clinical setting cover exposure control, hazard communication, and the training and documentation that go with them. Where testing happens on site, the applicable certificate carries its own requirements for who may perform what, and for quality control records.
Both are areas where the day-to-day work is routine and the failure mode is a gap in the record rather than a dramatic incident.
Stark and Anti-Kickback in plain terms
These rules govern financial relationships that could influence where patients are referred. In a private practice they show up in unremarkable-looking places: space and equipment leases, medical directorships, how physician compensation is calculated, and arrangements with anyone who sends or receives referrals.
The arrangements that cause difficulty are rarely the ones that felt questionable at the time. They are usually the ones that felt like normal business and were structured without anyone checking against these particular rules, which is a genuinely specialist question.
What an audit actually looks like
Most audit activity begins as a request for records on a set of claims. What determines how it goes is whether the documentation supports what was billed and whether it can be produced quickly and completely.
That makes the useful preparation continuous rather than reactive: knowing where records are, knowing who responds, and knowing that what was documented and what was coded describe the same visit.