Eligible professionals (EP), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAH) that cannot demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs could soon face Medicare payment adjustments. But CMS has an important message for providers: There's still time to prove meaningful use and avoid adjustments.
Also known as the "mega rules," the omnibus final rules are clarifications and finalizations of the HIPAA rules of 2003, the HITECH rules of 2008, and the incorporation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) rules into the Privacy and Security rules. These are not sweeping changes, as many describe, but clarifications. In most cases, what are now final rules are best practices that organizations should already be following.
Most soon-to-be HIM professionals fresh out of college want nothing more than to know what's going on inside the HIM director or manager's head. After all, it would help to know what a potential interviewer is thinking when you pop into that chair for your first interview for a potential HIM job, wouldn't it?
Eleven years ago, when hospitals and other healthcare facilities were on the cusp of the new HIPAA Privacy Rule, Kathleen A. Frawley, JD, MS, RHIA, FAHIMA, spoke words that were prophetic.
Managing coders is challenging enough when you work with them face to face. Manage them when they are off-site, though, and you've got a whole new set of challenges. You may rarely have the chance to shake their hand, see them smile, or read their body language in meetings. Are they productive? Are they happy? If you can't reach them, do you know what's going on?
