CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) released final rules October 6 with the intention of simplifying EHR requirements and allowing providers and consumers to exchange health information with greater flexibility. This includes the final rule with comment period for the EHR incentive programs and final rule for the 2015 edition health IT certification criteria.
Q: When you refer to a laptop being encrypted for security reasons, is that the same as password protected? We have a number of employees with laptops who transport them from work to home and are concerned about a breach if a laptop is stolen.
If you need to copy some medical records that include PHI, you're probably on point when taking steps to ensure privacy. You make sure no one's around. You grab the documents right from the copier when you're done, you don't forget the originals, and you take the records where they need to go. No one sees them. No HIPAA violations here.
Ah. Breathe a sigh of relief, Mr. and Mrs. HIPAA privacy and security officer. Another year is winding down, and your facility hasn't suffered a major breach of patient information.
With the transition to ICD-10, some documentation issues have required the capture of new information while others involve updated, modified, and otherwise expanded documentation needs. As we gain experience with ICD-10 and more questions are answered, physicians, coding professionals, and other clinical staff must continue training in clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and ICD-10. Now comes the hard work: ensuring consistency and reliability of ICD-10 coded accounts and the analytics that will be the outcome of ICD-10 data.
