Law enforcement officials in Texas, Florida, and New York recently announced plea agreements and fines involving the billing of an unapproved prescription drug and Medicare fraud.
There's a popular saying that states, "Too much of a good thing can be bad for you." I believe that's never been truer than now when it comes to EMR documentation.
It has been quite a year in the privacy world, hasn't it? The OCR website has reported 500 breaches of unsecured PHI affecting 500 or more individuals, totaling more than 12 million patients. There has been an increase in HIPAA-related criminal sentences involving jail time. And private lives are no longer private.
How quickly time flies! As 2012 has now come to an end, it seems to be a good time to reflect on some of the challenging standards hospitals faced this year.
Successful programs to reduce preventable hospital readmissions range from the transitional care model created by Mary Naylor, PhD, FAAN, RN, a nurse researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, to Project RED, created by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Kathleen Heery, MS, RN, CCM, and Cheryl Pacella, DNP(c), HHCNS-BC, CPHQ, the homecare consultant and quality advisor at CAP Consulting, LLC, discussed the secrets to their success during "Reducing Readmissions by Improving Transitions in Care," an HCPro webcast.
