As we celebrate our 30th year of delivering you the latest in HIM, we would like to invite you to celebrate the HIM profession with us. Each month this year, HIM Briefings (formerly Medical Records Briefing) will include a special feature that highlights the changes to our publication and the HIM profession over the years.
The Joint Commission's September 2015 Perspectives encourages "hospitals to design systems to ensure accurate and complete medical records." Although this is not a new concept, it becomes more important as more hospitals' medical records become electronic while still maintaining a certain amount of paper documentation.
As we embark on our 30th year of delivering you the latest in HIM, we would like to invite you to celebrate the HIM profession with us. Each month this year, HIM Briefings (formerly Medical Records Briefing) will include a special feature that highlights the changes to our publication and the HIM profession over the years.
HIM Briefings (formerly Medical Records Briefing) asked HIM and release of information (ROI) professionals about their ROI practices for its first quarterly benchmarking survey of 2016. (The survey was completed in October 2015.) We introduced several new questions this year about the medical record itself as well as ROI practices.
Providers often struggle with modifiers‑even those they've had available to report for many years‑due to the unique scenarios they face at their facilities, staffing changes, and/or unclear or lacking authoritative guidance.
CMS finalized its proposals regarding the 2-midnight rule, including moving responsibility for rule enforcement and education from Recovery Auditors to Quality Improvement Organizations (QIO). This latter change occurred October 1, 2015.
The 2016 OPPS final rule includes the first negative payment update for the system, but CMS also listened to commenters' suggestions to make a variety of proposals less onerous either operationally or financially.
CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) released final rules October 6 with the intention of simplifying EHR requirements and allowing providers and consumers to exchange health information with greater flexibility. This includes the final rule with comment period for the EHR incentive programs and final rule for the 2015 edition health IT certification criteria.
