CMS released the Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters for 2019 final rule April 9 to give states additional flexibility when choosing benefits in essential health benefit benchmark plans offered under health insurance marketplaces.
Q: We are having trouble determining what qualifies a patient as having an acute myocardial infarction (MI) and what documentation would support the diagnosis. Can you help our coding team clarify?
Q: We are a doctor’s office in a small town. Recently, one of our patients threw away some papers containing PHI in a wastebasket in the waiting room. Another patient’s child later took them out of the wastebasket. The child’s parent brought the papers up to the desk and apologized. Is this a privacy breach? Are we responsible for the papers even though we turned them over to the patient?
Q. Do laptops need to be encrypted if there is no PHI stored on them? Employees do use them to access PHI, but the PHI is stored remotely. We have a policy that states that employees are not allowed to save PHI to laptops.
Q. I’ve been taught to tell our patients, “We look forward to seeing you on x day at x time with x doctor.” This has always been left on cell phone voice mails or home phones. Is this a HIPAA-compliant practice?
