I was recently working on an EHR project, and there was a deep and vibrant discussion about which functionalities are part of the “core” EHR and which are “add-ons.” I came to the conclusion that the line is becoming quite blurred between what has historically been hospital information system (HIS) vs. EHR functionality.
The move to an electronic record affects all areas of the hospital, and the release of information (ROI) function is no exception. In our first quarterly benchmarking survey of 2011, MRB examined the ROI practices of hospitals with hybrid or fully electronic records.
In what was perhaps an effort to remind providers to consider medical record retention as they move to EHRs, CMS released MLN Matters SE1022, which addresses medical record retention limits and media formats.
With the end of the year approaching, you, along with many of your HIM director and manager colleagues, may soon be tasked with conducting annual staff evaluations. Chances are it isn’t your favorite task of the year. But it needs to be done.
Present-on-admission (POA) indicators, hospital-acquired conditions (HAC), and never events have been around for a while. However, they still seem to cause compliance conundrums, says Shannon McCall, RHIA, CCS, CCS-P, CPC, CPC-I, CCDS, director of HIM and coding at HCPro, Inc., in Marblehead, MA.
It should come as no surprise that medical record documentation made the list for top standards noncompliance for the first half of 2010. Our old favorites just won’t go away.
MRB recently asked several advisory board members for crucial tips that new HIM managers and directors should know as they learn their way around their job and department.
The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) approved the Chicago-based Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) and the Drummond Group, Inc. (DGI) of Austin, TX, as the first official certifiers of EHR technology in late summer 2010. In late September, ONC also approved InfoGard Laboratories, Inc., in San Luis Obispo, CA. Now that ONC has named at least three authorized testing and certification bodies (ATCB), healthcare vendors can seek certification for their EHR systems and technologies, and providers can begin to look for certified products in the marketplace. Providers must use certified EHR technology to qualify for meaningful use incentive payments.
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.
