Where is the healthcare community at in terms of EHR implementation, and where is it going from here? And what effect, if any, has the EHR meaningful use incentive program had on implementation efforts? MRB asked these and other questions in our July 2010 benchmarking survey on EHRs—and HIM professionals from 325 hospitals and facilities answered.
RACs are looking at excisional debridement coding, and it’s no wonder. There are plenty of potential traps for coders reporting these inpatient procedures.
It comes up every other day now, it seems. It’s the question with no good answer; you’re sure of it. But your staff members really want to know: Why can’t they eat at their desks?
As I work with various clients who are preparing for transition to EHRs, I often hear HIM staff voice concerns that they haven’t been invited to the table for discussions regarding EHR strategy. In some cases, the selection of an entire system has been made for the facility with literally no input from the HIM department!
Qualifying for EHR meaningful use incentive dollars is no easy feat. A provider needs to be an eligible professional or hospital under the Medicare or Medicaid programs, with the latter also dependent on whether the provider’s state participates in the program. The EHR technologies the provider uses must be certified, and the provider must use those technologies appropriately for at least 90 days and attest to all of the above.
The transition to ICD-10 is not in any way the kind of transition we made from ICD-8 to ICD-9, nor is it a simple matter of training coders and installing a new encoder.
Now that fall is in the air, hospitals may feel a chill as Medicare implements the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) through the 2011 inpatient prospective payment system. Aspects include:
