Like other services covered by Medicare, observation must be reasonable and necessary or, in other words, medically necessary. The physician must document that they assessed patient risk to determine that the patient would benefit from observation services.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is monitoring the rapid spread of a novel 2019 coronavirus, formally named COVID-19, first identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. On January 30, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a public health emergency of international concern due to its sustained person-to-person spread within countries and across continental borders.
Case management leaders were warned of an impending nurse case manager shortage 10 years ago, and now it is upon us. The U.S. Bureau of Labor has estimated that U.S. healthcare organizations will be short at least 1 million nurses by 2022.
