Privacy officers must ensure their hospital removes potential patient identifiers from data sets used for reasons outside of treatment, payment, and healthcare operations, privacy experts say.
It has been quite a year in the privacy world, hasn't it? The OCR website has reported 500 breaches of unsecured PHI affecting 500 or more individuals, totaling more than 12 million patients. There has been an increase in HIPAA-related criminal sentences involving jail time. And private lives are no longer private.
The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) wants improved and unified health information governance to standardize EHR use. AHIMA says the move will lead to technology that provides better, more efficient patient care.
How quickly time flies! As 2012 has now come to an end, it seems to be a good time to reflect on some of the challenging standards hospitals faced this year.
As an HIM professional, you have long managed the quality and integrity of the health record. You know all components inside and out, aid in the design of forms to accurately and completely capture the necessary information, and point out potential data discrepancies in the record prior to finalization.
It's December, the end of a long 2012 for you and your HIM staff. Whether you have 50 coders or five, you may be putting the final touches on an end-of-the-year celebration.
