Social networking and its related communication vehicles pose significant privacy and security challenges for healthcare organizations, says Chris Apgar, CISSP.
Q Is it permissible to allow hospital employees who have been granted access to PHI through the workforce clearance procedure to access their own PHI through the electronic medical record (EMR) without first signing a release or authorization?
HITECH was the trigger for a global HIPAA policy review at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (North Shore-LIJ) in Great Neck, NY. This was no easy task; North Shore-LIJ includes a medical school, a research institute, 15 hospitals, more than 200 ambulatory care centers, over 5,600 beds, and a total workforce of more than 42,000 employees.
Coding productivity will decrease at least initially with the switch to ICD-10-CM/PCS. Coders will also need complete, accurate documentation to take advantage of the new code set's increased specificity. So HIM and coding managers need to know how productive their coders are and the extent of their clinical knowledge base, as well as how accurately and completely physicians are documenting.
