Compiling the statistics for insider threats to patient privacy is easy. It’s the mitigation of these risks that takes time, strategy, and commitment. According to the January 2017 Protenus Breach Barometer, internal health system employees were responsible for 58.4% of breached patient data during January 2017.
Let's look at one specific area where case managers can make a difference: reducing hospital-acquired anemia (HAA). This condition is often the result of blood draws performed cumulatively—and sometimes excessively—as part of laboratory testing.The prevalence of HAA can be exacerbated by another form of inappropriate medical care—in this case, laboratory tests. The goal is to ensure a patient only undergoes laboratory tests he or she truly needs.
Regulatory compliance reforms have forced CMS to set the bar high for meeting evaluation and management (E/M) standards. This is especially true for clinical documentation improvement (CDI) performance for coding and billing level four and five patient visits in outpatient settings.
National healthcare spending increased by 5.8% in 2015, the highest single-year growth since 2007, according to a recent American Medical Association (AMA) Policy Research Perspective report based on CMS data. This translates to the United States spending $3.2 trillion on healthcare in 2015, which is the most recent year for which data is available.
