This week’s Medicare updates include the extension of a final rule on improvements for acute care and critical access hospitals, an OIG report on potential abuse and neglect at skilled nursing facilities, a revision to the July update of HCPCS codes, and more!
Q: Our clinical trial claims often hit edits for missing drugs or devices when those are supplied by the trial sponsor and we can't bill for them. We've been manually reviewing these edits. Is there a recommended method for handling these types of edits that's more efficient?
It can be impractical for medical researchers to seek authorization from all the patients whose medical records are sought for a study. That’s why HIPAA allows researchers to use de-identified PHI from records without individual authorization.
Hospitals are doing a better job at protecting patients from safety problems leading to deaths from accidents, infections, injuries, and medical errors, but there is still much room for improvement, according to the most recent Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grade report.
Commercial and government payers track chronic conditions using Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC), and providers can track HCCs to better monitor and project reimbursement and compliance.
