It's November. It's the time of year when Americans give reasons for being thankful. One of them, of course, is a huge turkey dinner with all the fixings on the fourth Thursday of the month.
This article incorporates activities that an organization can use to improve the policy process and ensure the development and implementation of effective policies. While we may think we have written HIPAA policies, remember that HIPAA is one set of requirements facing all organizations that work with information.
Providers know the drill for addressing and operationalizing CMS' annual IPPS and OPPS updates, along with the usual ICD-9-CM and CPT® coding changes. The industry has become used to CMS' timetable for releasing inpatient and outpatient proposed and final rules and knows that it has to be ready to go live with coding, billing, and operational changes October 1 and January 1, respectively.
