In celebration of our 30th year of delivering you the latest in HIM, we continue to reflect on what HIM was like 30 years ago, examine today's HIM landscape, and look to the future.
Q: The chief executive officer of the hospital where I work is talking about having our hospital coding done in India. What are the potential ramifications of this plan for our hospital? I know a prominent hospital in Palo Alto, California, was going to do this in 2011.
Have any U.S. hospitals actually outsourced their medical record coding to foreign countries? What are the liability risks? What do we need to be aware of in terms of HIPAA compliance?
A: Yes, many organizations send coding and transcription work overseas. Despite business associate agreements (which you must get with any such vendor, offshore or not), it may be difficult to ensure that these vendors are HIPAA compliant, although one could make the same argument about U.S. vendors as well. Be sure to do your due diligence by carefully checking your vendor's references (and documenting the results) should you choose to go this route. You might also discuss this with your organization's insurance carrier and/or attorney for an assessment of the risks.
Editor's note: Chris Simons, MS, RHIA, the director of health information and privacy officer at Maine General Medical Center in Augusta, answered these questions. Simons is also an HIMB advisory board member. This information does not constitute legal advice. Consult legal counsel for answers to specific privacy and security questions. Send your questions related to HIPAA compliance to Editor Jaclyn Fitzgerald atjfitzgerald@hcpro.com.
One of the last major shifts in coding before the transition to ICD-10 was the introduction of diagnosis-related groups (DRG) in 1982. Now that the struggle to implement ICD-10 has passed, how do the two transitions measure up? Both Wendy Coplan-Gould, RHIA, president of HRS Coding in Baltimore, and Sallee Silverman, RHIA, an AHIMA-approved ICD-10 trainer and a manager with HRS Coding, were actively working in healthcare through both shifts and shared their thoughts with HIM Briefings shortly after ICD-10 went live in October 2015. When DRGs were introduced, Coplan-Gould was working as the associate director of the Maryland Resource Center in Maryland.
Over-querying is a common concern in CDI. It can influence productivity and workflow. It can cause delays in documentation and coding processes. It can also overwhelm and frustrate physicians, who in turn may be less likely to support or engage with CDI program efforts.
To find the right solution for your organization, you must understand how and why employees are using messaging and email services.
"You want a solution that's easy to use, and that's within the work environment of whoever is sending the message," Apgar says. Apgar's case in point is Oregon's state-sponsored CareAccord Direct Secure Messaging email service. The service doesn't connect to all EHRs or an organization's email service. Users have to log in through the website to send a message. Busy employees, he points out, particularly clinical staff like physicians, are unlikely to use a service that requires them to go out of their way, making it a poor choice.
Text messaging solutions directed at the healthcare industry were not always common and user friendly. Until about a year ago, there were few mature products on the market for securing text messages, Apgar says. The ones that did provide good security had serious usability limitations as most could only be used to communicate with other people in your network. A specialist, Apgar says, wouldn't have been able to send a quick, secure text to his or her patient's primary care doctor if the doctor was not part of the specialist's organization. Some services, like Tiger Text and HipaaChat, offer a solution to this problem. (See the March 2015 issue of BOH for more information about Tiger Text.) If the sender uses Tiger Text, but the recipient does not, Tiger Text delivers a text message that includes a link to the now encrypted text message. When the recipient clicks the link, the browser on the mobile device opens up to the text message, which is encrypted at a National Institute of Standards and Technology standard 256-bit encryption.
Keep in mind, however, that you have to treat text messaging the same as email. Device security and storage need to be analyzed. Burton warns that some may not realize the text messages on their phones leave traces of data behind.
Apgar agrees. "They don't understand that ultimately the cell phone carrier has servers that back up your texts, and you have it [stored] on your phone," he says.
