Q A fax containing PHI is sent to an incorrect fax number. Did the covered entity (CE) or business associate (BA) violate HIPAA? Must the patient disclosure accounting record include this incident?
Don't let the new patient-centered communication standards catch you up short. These standards, which took effect January 2011 and begin affecting survey findings January 2012, cover not only the Rights of the Individual chapter, but the Provision of Care; Human Resources; and Record of Care, Treatment, and Services chapters as well.
The Program for Evaluating Payment Patterns Electronic Report (PEPPER), distributed either quarterly or annually depending on the type of facility, contains large amounts of data on how a facility compares to others in the same state, the same jurisdiction (i.e., the same Medicare Administrative Contractor), and nationwide in terms of coding and medical necessity target areas. (Find out more at www.pepperresources.org.)PEPPER identifies when facilities are outliers in their reporting of multiple risk areas. For coding, those areas are:
