Each year the Office of Inspector General (OIG) outlines its enforcement priorities. Its 2015 Work Plan includes items case managers should have on their radar.
After physicians treat them in the emergency department (ED), millions of patients each year head home to recover, but not all of them do so successfully. Many wind up needing to head right back to the hospital because something goes wrong and the discharge fails. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) recently partnered with the Johns Hopkins University Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality to study this issue.
This week’s updates include solicitation of new safe harbor and special fraud alerts and changes to the Recovery Audit Program. Click the link above to read more about this week’s updates.
While organizations should focus on performing regular risk assessments and analyses, there are also other ways in which they must review their systems for compliance. Often, these other evaluations are overlooked despite their value, says Kevin Beaver, CISSP, an information security consultant in Atlanta. In particular, organizations should be careful not to forget about performing vulnerability assessments and penetration tests, which are components of an overall risk assessment or analysis, says Beaver, who is a BOH editorial advisory board member.
In September 2014, CMS and the Office for the National Coordinator (ONC) released a final rule that offers enhanced flexibility for eligible professionals, eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals using certified EHR technology (CEHRT) and working toward meaningful use attestation (https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2014-21021.pdf). The final rule regulations became effective October 1, 2014.
